HOLIDAY ESSENTIALS: The Sugar and Spice Summer Book Club

This is pretty much how the space beside my bed looks right now - an ever-growing tower of books to read this summer:

In fact, apart from the bottom one - Minding Frankie - I have already finished them all and so will be needing some new summer reads before very long at all. In the meantime, I thought I'd show you the books that have kept me company on my two trips so far this summer, to Ibiza and to Valencia.

Before I headed to Ibiza, I asked my Twitter followers:

Anyone got any good book recommendations? Want chick lit for easy beach reading :)

And they stepped up! With @SuburbanYogini telling me: try I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk. You'll love it. Read it on the plane to Aus!

And @mrsbossa saying: Chick lit ain't really my bag, but The Enchanted April is the loveliest holiday read EVER!

I could not have had two better recommendations, as I found myself lost in both books.

The first, I Heart New York came with me to Ibiza - a real piece of girly chick lit for a real girly holiday! As I lay by the pool in the heat, I was transported to the heat of a New York summer and the life and loves of Angela Clarke as she escapes to the Big Apple to get over her cheating ex! It is an easy and fun read which takes you on a tour of NYC as Angela finds her feet in a new city.

The Enchanted April accompanied me to Valencia. The story in this is a little more complicated but no less entertaining. I found myself laughing and crying by turns with the characters of this "enchanting" story. Four women - each escaping something or someone in their lives - find themselves answering an advert to rent a dilapidated castle high above a bay on the Italian Riviera and the story tells of their month long sojourn.

Lizzy Harrison Loses Control is another in the chick lit genre.Lizzy Harrison is in control - of everything! Something I find very difficult to relate to!! But then, in the same week that her best friend suggests it's maybe time to loosen up a little, she is thrown into the arms of her boss's number one client (she works for a PR firm). And just like that - she loses control - of everything! What ensues is a funny story which is also sweet and poignant. (The first chapter of this book was included in an asos order!!)

The penultimate book in the pile is one that I read a couple of years ago but that my mum just read and enjoyed immensely. The Bolter is the true story of Idina Sackville - the woman, so they say, who scandalised 1920s society and became White Mischief's infamous seductress - told by her great-granddaughter, Francis Osborne - who also happens to be the wife of George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The book has all of the ingredients for drama, intrigue, romance, suspense and the definite ability to shock, more than a little. Completely un-put-down-able!!

And finally, and probably a little uncool and out of place with the others, is Minding Frankie. The latest offering from Maeve Binchey. If you've always given her books a miss, just try it. My darling grandmother always used to buy me her books as Christmas presents (usually the lovely but rather cumbersome hardback copies) - she loved the stories of Ireland and has passed that love on to me. I am just over half-way through this book - it is a little difficult at times as it deals with a young man thrust into the role of being a father to a tiny newborn just as he has vowed to give up the drink. The large cast of characters are many of those from Binchey's earlier books which is usual and how all of their lives are entangled with the baby, Frankie.

What are you reading this summer? Do you have any recommendations for when I finish these?