One of my favorite things about summer is the reading. Although we can pick up a good romance or “beach read” any time, there’s nothing more enjoyable than reading a story set on the beach or on vacation during the summer. This year, far from the heat and humidity and all together “summer” setting of the last few of my summers, I appreciated them just a little bit more. Here are a handful of this summer’s top picks.

Breathing by Cheryl Renee Herbsman was one of the first books I read this summer. Savannah is a true Carolina girl who would find nothing more enjoyable than to spend her summer working at the library and reading romance novels … until she meets Jackson, living near her for the summer. He’s her dream boy, though as readers we realize that far before she does.

Savannah’s mother is a controlling and unsympathetic one, though throughout the story we find the pieces about why she is that way; Jackson, being a gentleman, is careful to obey all of Savannah’s mothers rules. When Savannah continues to have bouts with terrible asthma, though, it seems that Jackson may be the person who can make that better. Of course, it can’t be that easy, and Jackson is pulled away from her at a critical time for family reasons. Will he be back? How will she go on and get better after these paralyzing attacks?

Breathing features a main character who is a combination of things that is just so rare in books: a smart girl … a smart SOUTHERN girl. I really appreciated that and appreciated more than Savannah is not bragging about it nor is she ashamed of it. She’s a real person. This book made use of southern dialect well without it being over done, even though there were particular phrases throughout that bothered me as a reader (“something fierce” was overused a bit). Herbsman definitely made a strong debut with this one!

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han will be a mega hit with Sarah Dessen fans — released May 2009, I don’t think it’s quite hit its peak because of the flood of new titles in the summer, but I suspect as more people read it and make the connection between the two writers’ styles, it’ll see its audience quite well.

Belly (short for Isabelle) spends her summers with her mother at Cousins Beach house, but they’re not the only ones. Every summer since she was a baby, Belly’s family has shared the summer home with her mother’s best friend Susannah and her two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah. But this summer was not like those previous summers; Belly’s finally coming into her own as a person and has suddenly caught the attention of Conrad and Jeremiah in ways she never did before when they were younger.

Although Belly has always had a fascination with Conrad, she meets another beacher, Cam, with whom she falls quickly in love with (well, love for a teenager looking for a beach romance, of course). But it’s Jeremiah who will drop the news on Belly that everything she believes and she wants in boys just isn’t what may be the best for her.

Add to the mix a realistic portrayal of a life-altering situation and The Summer I Turned Pretty becomes much more than a breezy read. Han weaves this narrative into the story quietly, much like Dessen can, and as such, she makes this a story that’ll remain with the reader a little longer than just the time that the reader spends with the book. Unfortunately, though, Han has yet to see her full potential as a reader realized; she does rely a bit on a tried and true situation and to be entirely superficial, I got confused with too many characters having C names and none of those characters having much personality or development, making them interchangeable and uninteresting. However, for a story focusing on Belly and summer flings, this one satisfied. I’m excited to see how the second book in this series will turn out. It’s slated for a spring 2010 release.

Okay, okay. Now you’re really judging me after seeing that the next entry is about Lauren Conrad’s L.A. Candy. But you know what? I liked it. Perhaps I liked it far more than I feel comfortable admitting, but wow. She — or the person she thanks for “helping” her in the end notes — wrote a pretty engaging, fast-paced, and fun book.

Jane moved to Los Angeles with her best friend Scarlett for an internship after finishing high school. Quickly after the move into a tiny, dingy apartment, Jane runs into a casting director at a club who offers her and Scarlett the opportunity to try out for a new reality series entitled “L.A. Candy.”

With a little trepidation, they go and as you can guess, the rest is history. Scarlett and Jane are paired up with two other girls whom they do not know and the show follows their lives as they unfold in Los Angeles. The girls are moved into a high class apartment, sent to parties, and followed at all times. Throw in some staged romances (though Jane doesn’t quite realize they’re staged, of course), some mani/pedi dates set up by the producers, and of course, plenty of girl drama, and you have your own “reality show.”

What I liked about L.A. Candy was that it actually seems like it gives some insight into Lauren Conrad herself — she writes from the perspective of someone who’s been here and done it. And it’s like a train wreck you can’t stop reading. Perhaps best of all is the massive cliffhanger at the end that will indeed force me to pick up the second book in this trilogy to-be. That book is slated for spring 2010, as well.

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Two other fantastic summer reads I’ve already blogged include Melissa Walker’s Lovestruck Summer and the book I’m working on right now, J. Courtney Sullivan’s Commencement.

What have been your favorite “summery” reads this year? There have been so many good ones that it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few!