Somewhere along the way, many of us made the tragic mistake of becoming adults.

And maybe we’re not all serious adults. Well, not entirely serious, anyway. Not like briefcase-at-breakfast serious. Not “let’s circle back” serious or “synergy” serious. But seriously adulty.

Like, maybe you feel guilty when you rest (I do).

Or maybe you’ve considered – or acted upon – turning your hobbies into hustle goals (I have).

Perhaps you sometimes look at books – yours or those you haven’t yet acquired – and wonder which one will make you smarter, better, more emotionally evolved, more culturally connected, more interesting at dinner parties you definitely do not actually want to attend (I’ve been there, too).

This is a devastating development, particularly because many of us used to know better.

Many of us remember… summer vacation.

And with summer kicking off in just a few weeks for those of us in the northern hemisphere, I thought it was a great time for us to remember that magic.

Summer, when we were younger, was not a rigid self-improvement program. It did not come with a content strategy or a plan for becoming our most elevated selves by Labor Day. Summer showed up barefoot and popsicle-sticky and slightly sunburned. It handed us a library card, a bicycle, a dozen mosquito bites, and an afternoon so wide open it felt like the Great Plains.

Go outside.

Come back when the streetlights turn on.

Read whatever looks interesting.

Become briefly hyperfocused on mermaids, dinosaurs, horses, ghosts, magic, spies, sharks, secret passageways, haunted houses, true crime, or natural disasters.

Nobody demanded to know whether our interests were balanced. Nobody asked if our reading list supported our long-term personal development. Nobody looked at a child lying upside down on a couch, reading a book about dragons, and wondered, “But how does this align with your brand?”

And thank fate.

Because that was the magic.

And the magic wasn’t just about the books themselves, though, for many of us, the books were an inherent part of it. It was the feeling that our time belonged to us. That we didn’t need permission to follow our curiosity. That we didn’t have to justify whatever delighted us in a given moment.

I think a lot of us miss that more than we realize.

Not childhood exactly. For many of us, childhood was complicated. Childhood is not, and never has been, universally soft or safe or golden, no matter how aggressively certain commercials or kid-inluencer types try to convince us otherwise.

But many of us remember at least flashes of that old summer feeling: the lawless lil bits of autonomy. The joy of choosing activities for no reason except wanting to do them. The thrill of being unproductive and fully alive.

And I would like to suggest that one of the easiest ways to reclaim a small piece of that magic is to read something Absolutely Ridiculous™️ this summer.

Not respectable.

Not impressive.

Not algorithmically optimized.

Ridiculous.

Full stop.

The Problem With Being a Responsible Reader

There is nothing wrong with reading serious books. Obviously. Serious books can be beautiful, necessary, even life-changing.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of us started treating our bookshelves like they need to mask as hard as we do when we’re faced with public opinion. We’ve curated our book choices like we’re going to need to defend them in reader court.

We read literary fiction because it is “important.”

We read nonfiction because we are “learning.”

We read classics because we “should.”

There’s nothing wrong with making those choices.

But sometimes, when we read romance, fantasy, cozy mysteries, paranormal romance, beach reads, romantasy, monster books, dragon books, vampire books, witch books, or books with shirtless men on the cover, we suddenly find ourselves explaining ourselves like we’ve been caught stealing office supplies (no hate, I’m a pen nerd, too).

“I know it looks silly, but it’s actually really smart.”

“It’s just a guilty pleasure.”

“I needed something easy.”

“I usually read heavier books.”

Friend.

No.

We are not doing guilty pleasure this summer.

We are doing pleasure.

Plainly. Unapologetically. Happily and with snacks!

A book does not have to be grim to be meaningful. A story does not have to punish you to matter. A romance novel can be emotionally intelligent. A fantasy novel can tell the truth about the real world. A cozy mystery can understand community better than a dozen prestige dramas where everyone is rich, miserable, and staring at a coastline while longing for the one that got away.

And paranormal romance? Well, if you’ve been around for a minute, you know my stance. Paranormal romance can smuggle a whole emotional thesis under the cover of “he’s hot and, oopsie, he’s a wolf.”

If that’s what you’re into.

Ridiculous Books Are Often Doing More Than We Might Admit

Here is the thing about ridiculous books: they are rarely actually only ridiculous.

A book about a haunted bakery might also be about grief.

A dragon book might be about power imbalance.

A vampire romance might be about hunger, loneliness, and the terror of being truly seen in the light of day.

A wolf shifter romance might be about instinct, loyalty, community, and whether love can be fierce without becoming overbearing.

A fake dating rom-com might be about how exhausting it is to perform a version of yourself everyone else finds convenient.

A cozy mystery with a pun title and a suspicious cat in boots might be about rebuilding a life after loss.

Even the great and mighty Tingle himself writes his Tinglers with a mission of proving love.

Say it with me: fun is not the opposite of depth.

Sometimes, fun is how depth survives, thrives, evolves, and moves us.

Sometimes the ridiculous book is the one that gets past your defenses because it is wearing a cape, toting a sword, and being very handsome but refusing to make direct eye contact with you until chapter seventeen because of some wound you’re going to overcome together. I don’t make the rules.

This is one of the reasons summer reading matters: summer gives us a broadly acceptable excuse to seek out joy on purpose.

Beach reads. Pool books. Vacation books. Road trip books. Books to throw in a tote bag next to sunscreen and the water bottle you always carry and swear you are really, finally gonna remember to drink from this time.

Summer lets us look like we are choosing books casually, when really we might be choosing the exact kind of emotional mood our brains crave.

You do not always need a book that asks you to become a better person.

Sometimes you need a book that lets you follow a unicorn princess’s journey to find her mate.

Nothing wrong with that.

Remember Choosing Books Like a Kid?

Think about how you chose books when you were younger.

Maybe you wandered through the library, pulled something off the shelf, and decided to read it because the title hooked you.

Maybe you picked the book with the coolest cover.

Maybe you read the back cover (back when books still had useful back covers instead of all-capped snippets of praise and acclaim) and saw one key phrase – secret power, forbidden forest, missing heir, mysterious stranger, magical school, haunted island – and that was that. Your fate was sealed. That book belonged to you now.

Maybe you checked out six books at once, even though the librarian gave you a look that was like, “Okay, kid, that’s ambitious,” and you accepted the challenge because you had no bills to pay and nothing else demanding your attention or time.

There was a purity to that kind of choosing, wasn’t there?

Which is not to say that our taste was impeccable – children have famously chaotic taste IMHO. When I was a kid, I’d happily skip from reading a masterpiece to a joke book to a horse story to a ghost mystery and then to the back of a cereal box (the original 1993 formulation of Rice Krispies Treats cereal, don’t @ me) with equal enthusiasm and commitment.

But that was the beauty of it.

We followed appetite.

We let curiosity lead.

We were not building a persona, a brand, or anything else for public consumption. We were not proving anything. We were just reaching for the thing that sparked something wonderful for us.

That spark is still useful.

Actually, it may be more useful now.

Because adulthood is very good at sanding down appetite. It teaches us to consider, compare, justify, and optimize. It gives us reviews, rankings, discourse, Goodreads pressure, the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, BookTok hype, bestseller lists, reading stats, and the overwhelming sense that whatever we choose says something permanent and public about us.

What if it doesn’t, though?

What if this summer, your reading life does not need to be a highlight reel, a résumé, or a moral statement?

What if it can just be a choice you make? For you – and only you.

Make Yourself a Joy-Forward Summer Reading List

Do Not:

• Make a perfect summer reading list
• Curate a list because you feel compelled to share it with the public
• Pick anything that “should”s you.

Your list does not need to be designed to impress some imaginary panel of well-read grown-ups who apparently live in our heads and judge us for reading comfort books.

Do:

• Center your list around joy
• Pick what others might think is ridiculous
• Honor your inner twelve-year-old as if they have been given a library card and no meaningful supervision

Reading Slumps Hate Delight

If you are in a reading slump, this is especially important.

A reading slump is not a moral failure. It’s not proof that you have lost your identity as a reader. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not something that can necessarily be solved by buying seven more books, even though I definitely respect this approach as a scientific method.

Sometimes your brain is tired.

Sometimes life has been too loud.

Sometimes every book feels like homework because everything feels like homework.

When that happens, the answer is not always to force yourself through the book you think you should read. Sometimes the answer is to lower the barrier to entry.

Pick the book with short chapters.

Pick the book with a kinda messy premise.

Pick the book with the trope you know always works on you, even if you’d never admit it to anyone else.

Pick the comfort read.

Pick the audiobook (yes, they count).

Pick the book you can read while eating a snack standing up in the kitchen.

Let reading be easy again before you ask it to become anything else.

Summer is good for this because summer already has a lil bit of built-in nonsense. It has flip-flops at restaurants. It has children screaming near bodies of water. It has fruit in cheerful colors that drip juice down your wrists while you eat. It has adults pretending that being sweaty and itchy is exactly what they were going for on vacation.

Summer is unserious by nature.

Use that.

Writers Need Ridiculous Books, Too

Writer-friends: some of us may need this permission the most.

Because writers are excellent at turning reading into work.

We study structure. We notice pacing. We track hooks, arcs, tropes, character motivation, emotional payoff, genre expectations, scene turns, chapter endings, and whether the midpoint is mid-pointing with sufficient mid.

Useful? Yes.

A little exhausting? Also yes.

At some point, writers have to remember that before we were studying stories, we were being stolen away by them.

That is the feeling to go looking for this summer.

Read something you are not trying to dissect.

Read something that makes you forget to take notes.

Read something that reminds you why you wanted to tell stories before publishing, marketing, algorithms, newsletters, categories, keywords, and the endless, impossible, annoying corn maze of being findable on the internet got involved.

Read for appetite.

Read for surprise.

Read for private delight.

Read for the feeling of opening a door you did not know was there.

Your craft will survive a little joy.

It may even get a nice lil recharge out of the experience.

Let Summer Belong to You Again

You do not need to earn a ridiculous book.

You do not need to balance every romance novel with a classic.

You do not need to apologize for reading stories that are fun, strange, dramatic, sexy, cozy, spooky, magical, romantic, or completely batty.

You can read the vampire book.

You can read the dragon book.

You can read the kissing book.

You can read the haunted lighthouse book, the small-town witch book, the alien bodyguard book, the cozy mystery with a bakery pun, the fantasy romance with a map in the front matter, the paperback you bought just because the cover was really purple and you love purple, or the thriller everyone says is overrated, if that’s what you want to read.

You can read something absolutely ridiculous this summer.

And don’t do it just to avoid real life; we can’t do that forever.

Because real life is exactly why delight matters.

There is still a part of you that remembers what it felt like to have an afternoon stretch ahead of you with no agenda except curiosity.

The kid you used to be is not gone.

They may be tired. They may be buried under calendar reminders and password resets and carpooling the kids and piles of dishes and countless moments when you have to tell your boss: “per my last email”.

But they are still in there.

Hand them a book.

Make it a ridiculous one.

A Small Invitation

If your version of ridiculous summer reading includes wolf shifters, fated mates, found family, small-town secrets, supernatural danger, emotional damage, and men who would rather fight evil in the woods than discuss their feelings in a timely manner, I built a whole series just for you.

You can start with the free first chapter of Black Wolf.

It has wolves.

It has longing.

It has secrets.

It has sweet and steamy moments.

It has a pack that saves you a seat and then immediately gets in allllll up in your business.

Which, if we’re being honest, is the kind of ridiculous your summer reading deserves.

Download the free first chapter of Black Wolf and meet the pack: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/wix0v1hem0