What should you read the summer you’re 16?

[BumBumCream]

I’m going away with DD for a few days after her GCSEs to lie on a sun lounger & tan. This is a great opportunity to supply her with books that must be read the summer you’re 16!

She used to be a huge reader before the phone crept in, but now is more likely to read thrillers and crime fiction than anything more highbrow, and the holiday probably isn’t entirely time to get her to read Jane Eyre… but what shall I take?

thinking along the lines of Catcher in the Rye, I Capture the Castle (she’s read this though).

Riding in cars with boys
Angela's ashes

Bonjour Tristesse

I love the eclectic suggestions on here!

in the end (we shared books) we read something by Harlan Coben
Tidelands by Philippa Gregory
Girl, Woman, Other
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
All Quiet on the Western Front
something by Colleen Hoover

I tried to think back and I was probably pretentiously reading Gatsby & Forster at this age, but I reckon the books that really impacted on me were Aristocrats by Stella Tilyard, Bad Blood by Lorna Sage, and Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth.

Wild Swans

What a brilliant list with brilliant reasons I’m going to read all these again.

I still remember my GCSE summer reading Lord of the Rings

Me too…it was great on teenage urges.

the Mary Renault Alexander books.

I also read every alistair Maclean and dick Francis so may not be a good judge….but I know a lot about horse racing and guns.

Really? She's just finished her GCSEs, is looking forward to a bit of downtime and Mummy is agonising over a reading list for her? Leave her alone!

Definitely Summer Sisters ❤️ I’ve read it every year since I was 12 and can’t wait for my girls to be old enough to read it. It was life changing for me.

I also loved all the Jilly Cooper name books, Harriet, Prudence, Octavia etc. Dated but so good to get lost in on holiday!

And of course take Jane Eyre! Rochester was my first love 😂 I was a geek though!

Lace by Shirley Conran

Nah I wasn’t agonising! But since we needed to take books & I knew we would both read them all, I figured I might as well take as ‘my’ books ones I thought she might enjoy or value. In the end I was too busy at work to really plan much & we just gathered books from around the house & took what we fancied from that.

Oh and Rebecca

I’ve got Rivals on the kindle, she can read that next holiday!

The summer I was 16 I went to Majorca and read Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Cruisie. Quite the awakening 🤣 reading it back as an adult I’m glad my parents didn’t ask or notice what I was reading!

I would just let her choose what she wants to read. I did not read anything profound or highbrow at 16 because I just wanted an easy to escape into. As I have got older I read most factual books and so called more highbrow books but I often want that escapism.

I read Judy Blumes Forever at 16. I recently re read it as a 40 year old, and I'm now firmly on the parents side lol x

Girl, Interupted
The Bell Jar

The Country girls series by Edna O’Brien captures that moment between childhood and adulthood when it’s all in front of them

I'd recommend Jessica Andrews Saltwater. It's amazing, especially if she is thinking of university.

Oh dear . At 16 I was reading Danielle Steele and Mills & Boon !! And possibly Jilly Cooper but that may have been a bit later. I would also have had a big pile of teenage magazines ..... I did used to get magazines from the country we were visiting to help with my language learning though.

Reading IS downtime … what’s wrong with you?! I spent my post-O level summer reading everything I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter where it came from.

Laughing my head off at Riders by Jilly Cooper. YES!

I'm getting some good suggestions myself here.

My own recommendation is Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes. Read it at 16 and felt like I'd found an author who saw the world through the same lens I saw it through.

For next time Neville Shute - On the Beach . Chilling but not gruesome .

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Absolutely hilarious and with a wonderful, central female character.