Quiz: Design Your Dream Vacation and Get a Vacation Book Recommendation

British teens go on a camping retreat to win a life-changing college scholarship and find love along the way. Football player Bradley manages his OCD and is at the top of his class. Celine, his academic rival and ex-best friend, is a brilliant conspiracy-theory influencer who has always dreamed of being a lawyer. She knows she needs a scholarship if she wants to achieve her dream but doesn’t expect her ex-best friend to join her. Now they will have to work together if they want to achieve their dreams and maybe fall for each other in the process. 

In this culinary romance novel, an anxious posh classicist competes on a British baking competition show and finds love along the way. Paris loves his cat, the classics, and baking, but is lacking any level of self-confidence, so his wonderfully bold roommate enters him in a televised baking competition. Now he’s on a baking show and can’t help but fall for his fellow contestant Tariq. Paris might just crumble under the pressure, but he also might be one step closer to learning how to really bake it in the world.

This is a dark academia staple that emphasizes the importance of unionization and decolonization. In an alternate version of mid-1800s England, the Cantonese orphan, Robin is adopted by an enigmatic translation professor who trains him to enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation. The lost meaning between two translated words fuels the magic items that make the British empire a global superpower. Robin is stuck between following the path laid out for him by the world he was raised in and turning against that path to fight against imperial expansion.

This literary nonfiction essay book questions what it means to love romance and other supposedly lowbrow, guilty, or trashy feminine fictions. She unpacks her feelings of growing up with feminine shame by looking at what makes something a guilty pleasure and how those works are looked at by society at large. It’s a fun, funny, and well-informed look at romance for anyone looking for a bite-sized bit of cultural criticism.

On Zinnia’s 21^st birthday, her biggest wish comes true. She pricks her finger on a spindle and falls into another world, one where sleeping beauty is real. Growing up with a rare medical condition, she always knew she would fall asleep one day and not wake up, so the fact that there was a princess who fell asleep and woke up again was amazing. Now she is a folklorist armed with the knowledge of the story she is trapped in and a phone that can still reach her best friend Charm. This sapphic portal fantasy novella questions what it means to accept your fate or challenge it entirely.