Elizabeth Banks Didn‘t Think She'd Marry Max Handelman When She Met Him at 18
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Actress and producer Elizabeth Banks has been with her husband Max Handelman for over 30 years, and her career in Hollywood would look totally different without him. They've each brought their unique skills and perspectives to not only marriage but a business partnership that has created some of the silver screen's greatest hits in the last decade. And they love talking about it.
Here's everything to know about Max Handelman and his relationship with Banks, as well as all their projects together.
Handelman and Banks have been living parallel lives since college, so a lot of the producer's history has been influenced by his wife. Handelman grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated from Catlin Gabel High School. In 1991, Handelman headed to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied communications, per a 2020 interview with Portland Monthly. They met and immediately connected. Following graduation, Banks moved to New York to pursue acting, and he went right along with her, where he first began a career as an investment banker.
When they headed to the West Coast, Handelman continued his education at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, where he received his MBA. The man has a lot of talents, and began a new venture as a sportswriter. He co-wrote a book published in 2006 called Why Fantasy Football Matters: (And Our Lives Do Not).
In 2002, Banks told Porter that she 'dragged him' into filmmaking, forming their production company, Brownstone Productions.
'He worked an 80-hour week; I was traveling all the time in a career that requires me to film on location for up to six months of the year,' Banks said. 'Forming the company really was about trying to combine our professional and personal goals.'
It made sense for them to work together instead of apart. Banks told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2019, 'When we were looking at how to make a life together, I felt like he was a real bloodhound for material and had a really good eye for things.'
And the experience of writing his book is in part what led to the wildly successful Pitch Perfect films. In 2015, Banks told NPR in an interview that Handelman's book agent sent him and Banks a proposal for a book about a cappella groups by Mickey Rapkin, which the first film was eventually based on.
She explained, 'When we first read the book proposal, we thought, 'Wow, this is a really fun group of oddballs who like to make music with their mouths. This could be a fun idea.''
Aside from Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2, Handelman has produced Surrogates, The Most Hated Woman in America, Shrill, 2019's Charlie's Angels, Cocaine Bear, and Bottoms.
In 2016, Banks told Vanity Fair, 'We have always made decisions that kept us together as a couple. We like working together. We're good at working together.'
That same year, she told the Producers Guild of America, 'We're pretty yin and yang,' describing Handelman as 'very diplomatic and business-minded and calm' and herself as 'fiery' and 'emotional.'
Banks said that they met on her first day of college during a 2012 Conan interview.
'He was wearing a vest with no shirt,' she quipped. 'To show off his sexy physique back in the day. He looked exactly like Jason Priestly from 90210, c'mon.'
Banks continued, 'I dated the same guy all throughout high school, and I basically—and he knows this so, this is no surprise to him—cheated on him with my now-husband.'
Their first date was at a jazz club, which Banks described as 'the greatest date' of her life.
In a 2022, episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Banks went into more detail about meeting Handelman at a frat party.
'The main thing I remember is that he was not that interested in me. He would say otherwise, but he was pursuing me a little bit. I was pursuing him for sure, and he was also pursuing this really cute girl named Kate,' Banks revealed.
She says she tried to give Handelman her phone number, but he told her he didn't have a phone, which was actually true.
But she replied, ''If you don't want my number, dude, you can just say so. Don't pretend you have, like, no ability to ever figure out how to call me. There are phones in this world. You can find a phone if you care.'
They stayed together through college and married about a decade later. Banks told Allure in 2015 that she didn't start out a relationship with Handelman with that intention, it's just how it worked out.
'I didn't meet my husband and think, 'I've met the man I'm going to marry,'' Banks explained. 'I was like, He's cute. I'll fuck him, because I'm 18 and in college.'
She added, 'Really, what happened was I've never met anyone that I liked more. In the early years, did I have crushes or little interests here and there? I know my husband did, and so did I, but we stayed together. We still to this day take the long view.'
Their wedding was on July 5, 2003, and held at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, InStyle reported.
The couple welcomed their son Felix via surrogate in 2011 and then their second child, Magnus Mitchell, in 2012, also via surrogate. On Call Her Daddy, Banks discussed her fertility struggles and how she talks about surrogacy with her sons.
'I've never been pregnant, and when I was young, I thought it was because I was really good at taking the pill, which I definitely was. But I have no idea. There's a small percentage of women who basically have unexplained infertility, and that is me, I'm in that category,' Banks said. 'I had always had plenty of eggs; I never had trouble making embryos; they did not implant. For whatever reason, my uterus is hostile, I don't know what's going on, but they just will not stay in there. So I had a broken belly, is what I told my kids, mommy had a broken belly.'
She described the process of mourning her fertility and feeling responsible, even though she knew objectively it was not anything wrong she was doing. Banks also said that, at the time, surrogacy was a much more unusual choice, and she wasn't certain it was the right one.
'I had a great friend who was like, 'At the end of the day, there's gonna be a baby and you're gonna be a parent and nobody's gonna care how it happened,'' Banks shared. 'The other great advice I got was like, 'Is your goal to be pregnant or to be a mom?' And I was like, 'Oh, shit. It's just to be a mom. Right. I don't need to be pregnant, fuck, I just want the baby.' So it was like what's the best way to get to the baby? What are you doing? Who cares about the pregnancy? Get the baby.'
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The Books You Should Actually Be Reading This Summer, According to ELLE Editors
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." For those of us who believe a packed bag is never complete without two (or ten) books, summer is our time. Nothing compares to the euphoria of a wide-open weekend, warm weather, a good book, a good view, and a sweating glass of something close at hand. If you're craving such synergy, perhaps the trickiest question isn't even where to go; it's what to bring with you. Still, the very definition of 'beach read' is fluid, subject to your taste. With that in mind, ELLE editors have compiled a list of new summer books that run the gamut between realism and fantasy, romance and horror, literary and breezy—with the hopes you'll find a read to fit your itinerary. Without further ado, below are our picks for the best books of summer 2025, as defined by the months of June, July, and August. Don't forget your sunscreen. 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'The titular walk into a bar ends badly. The unnamed narrator's husband is leaving her for a woman named Maggie. Only weeks later, she gets a diagnosis of breast cancer. The two heartbreaks are so linked that she names her tumor Maggie. Katie Yee's debut is filled with eerily real accounts of the crazy things we obsess on after a breakup, humor in disaster, and the salvation found in true friendships.'—AG $25.10 at July 29.'Emma Rosenblum has a knack for writing about the rich and catty. Her buzzy debut Bad Summer People is set in an exclusive beach community, while her sophomore novel, Very Bad Company, takes place at an executive retreat. In her third title, Mean Moms, Rosenblum once again takes readers inside a dishy, insular scene—this time, that of Manhattan private school moms. The plot centers on a trio of mothers—Frost, Morgan, and Belle—whose children all attend the same top-ranked private school. There's a gripping mystery that kicks off when a new mom infiltrates their clique, but as with all of Rosenblum's books, my favorite aspect is the smart, biting, and often hilarious, social commentary she weaves in throughout the suspenseful tale. With Mean Moms, Rosenblum once again proves she is a master of skewering the worlds she inhabits.'—KWA $28.99 at August 5.'Another juicy read from the author of Before We Were Innocent, this one is set in the drug-and-bubbly fueled world of Laurel Canyon of the early '70s. When Los Angeles newcomer Lane Warren, a journalist working on her first novel, meets Hollywood native Gala Margolis at a party, they forge a complicated bond. Wild child Gala helps make Lane a social star, while coolheaded Lane urges Gala to pursue her own writing talents—to a point. In a time when few creative women reach the top of their field, friendship perhaps inevitably turns to rivalry. Touching on themes of ambition, ambivalent motherhood, and life in the L.A. fishbowl, Berman's novel is ultimately about the importance of owning your own story—and the possibility of rewriting it.'—Sara Austin, executive editor $30.00 at August 5. 'Be warned: Moderation is far from your typical effortless beach read. Elaine Castillo's novel is as expansive as the VR landscape her protagonist, Girlie Delmundo, must navigate after she's hired for a new content moderator position. As a social media moderator capable of stomaching the alarmingly graphic material thrust in her face each day, Girlie soon adapts to Playground, her company's latest VR acquisition. But her feelings for her new boss, William Cheung, as well as the mysteries surrounding Playground itself, threaten to eat away at Girlie's careful boundaries. A love story for those who love Severance (both Ling Ma's book and the unaffiliated Apple TV+ series), Moderation is ambitious, challenging, and brilliant.'—LPP $29.00 at August 12. 'Neruda on the Park author Cleyvis Natera returns later this summer with the searing The Grand Paloma Resort, a novel set amongst the staff of a luxury hotel in the Dominican Republic. When a looming category-five hurricane, the case of two missing girls, and the ever-present inequalities of race and class collide over the course of one seven-day stay, the guests and the staff—including sisters Laura and Elena—can no longer maintain their unsteady equilibrium. The White Lotus ought to look to Natera's clear-eyed literary thriller for inspiration.'—LPP $30.00 at August 26. 'One of my most-anticipated reads at the start of 2025, Katabasis is R.F. Kuang's triumphant return to fantasy after her 2023 publishing satire Yellowface. The author of The Poppy War trilogy and Babel, Kuang is of course no stranger to fantasy, and Katabasis features perhaps her most unorthodox approach to magic yet. On its surface, the book's setup seems straightforward: A Cambridge student and her rival must journey to the underworld to save their professor. But the challenges they encounter throughout their romp through Hell have as much to do with their feelings for each other, their insecurities about themselves, and their mislaid trust in Cambridge as they do with the dangers of Hell itself. Laced with Kuang's signature critiques of colonialism and academia, Katabasis is also a love story, and an ultimately stunning one at that.'—LPP $24.50 at You Might Also Like The 15 Best Organic And Clean Shampoos For Any And All Hair Types 100 Gifts That Are $50 Or Under (And Look Way More Expensive Than They Actually Are)
Elle
11 hours ago
- Elle
That ‘We Were Liars' Plot Twist Leaves a Major Question Unanswered
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Spoilers below. In an addendum published in the deluxe edition of E. Lockhart's 2014 bestseller We Were Liars, the author mentions The Sixth Sense as one of several inspirations for the memory loss that protagonist Cadence Sinclair endures throughout Lockhart's story. As it turns out: Cady does, indeed, see dead people. This revelation will come as little surprise to fans of the book. The plot twist is exactly what propelled We Were Liars to infamy amongst readers, especially BookTok acolytes, who pushed the title back onto the bestseller list during the pandemic. But for those watching the new Prime Video adaptation without this context, the finale is likely to land much harder. Episode 10, 'My Friends Are Lying in the Sun,' at last pulls the curtain away to reveal a horrible truth: There's a simple reason the Liars—Gat, Johnny, and Mirren—didn't call Cadence for months after the events of so-called Summer 16. They weren't alive to do so. Short answer: As Johnny later puts it, the Liars 'really didn't know how to do arson.' Long answer: By the end of the Summer 16 timeline, the Liars have uncovered enough family secrets, backstabs, and betrayals to convince them they can no longer willingly participate in the Sinclair legacy. They decide they want to make a statement. They want to prove the family's obsession with inheritance is fickle, cruel, and unjustified. They want to, literally, burn it all down. They decide to set Clairmont—the main house on Beechwood Island—ablaze. (It's worth mentioning that they are also a little drunk.) As they wipe the wood floors with gasoline and craft Molotov cocktails on the gleaming marble countertops, they execute a reckless plan. Gat takes up his position at the boat station. Mirren turns her mother's bedroom into a tinderbox, while Johnny tackles the attic and Cadence the downstairs. At midnight, they strike their matches, but both Johnny and Mirren get distracted: Johnny by a picture of their grandfather, Harris, and Mirren by a painting in her mother's bedroom. By the time they attempt to run out of their rooms, the smoke has become too thick for them to see where they're going. Meanwhile, Cady successfully escapes the house, only to go charging back when she hears her family's golden retrievers whining from inside. The Liars have forgotten that Cady's mother locked the dogs in Clairmont to keep them calm during the evening's planned fireworks. By the time Cady reaches the goldens, everything around her is burning. A falling wooden beam smacks her across the head—likely causing the injury that will trigger her memory loss—and she can only listen to the dogs' cries as they succumb to the smoke. (If I can go through life without ever having to watch a scene like this again, I'll be thankful.) The loss of the dogs is horror enough on its own. It's an unspeakable, avoidable mistake, a terrible act of negligence and a betrayal of the animals' trust and innocence. Remembering this tragedy in the Summer 17 timeline, Cady is overcome with grief, sobbing as the Liars hold her close. But it doesn't take her long to recall the rest, and somehow, it's worse. Not only did Cady forget to let the dogs out, but she wasted precious time stealing her grandmother's black pearls from Clairmont's clutches. Doing so means Gat doesn't see her when he comes sprinting inside the building, desperate to save his would-be step-cousins. Soon, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren are all trapped inside the smoke and fire, while Cady runs out onto the beach. 'We didn't even think about the gas line,' the ghost version of Gat says in the Summer 17 timeline. And so we watch in flashbacks as the house blows up, and the force of the explosion knocks Cady back into the ocean, likely compounding her brain injury and the resulting amnesia. Gat, Johnny, and Mirren all die in the blast. They are definitely not flesh-and-blood humans, but—as Johnny makes clear—neither are they figments of Cady's imagination. They seem to be ghosts, 'haunting' Cady because she is not yet at peace with their deaths, and neither are they. No one but her seems capable of seeing these spirit-Liars (at least until the final scene, when we learn Johnny appears before his mother, Carrie). Cady interacts with each Liar once more after learning their fates: with Johnny, who admits his own fear of hell but believes Cady will spend the rest of her life doing good things to earn a tier in heaven; with Mirren, who wishes they would have 'let themselves be messy sometimes' so that they 'actually could have seen each other'; and with Gat, who isn't sure if he's 'real' but knows he loves her still. The ghosts only finally disappear after all four Liars jump off the dock together one last time. Cady's grandfather, Harris, has eyed Cady as the next heir of the Sinclair empire. When she rejects his gift—her grandmother's black pearls—she thereby rejects his symbolic passing of the baton. Harris decides, then, to threaten her. He reveals that a Time reporter will soon arrive on the island to interview him about his legacy. If Cady does not accept her place in the Sinclair family tree, Harris claims he will tell the journalist what he knows about what happened that fateful night in Summer 16. Cady's relatives believe she was a tragic heroine, the sole survivor who attempted to save her cousins from a terrible (accidental) fire. Harris knows the truth: The 'arson, animal cruelty, and involuntary manslaughter' will characterize the rest of her life, should it become known to her family, her friends, and the general public. 'When the reporter comes on Saturday, you keep that in mind,' he tells her. But after bidding the ghost-Liars goodbye, Cady doesn't seem to care what comes next. When the reporter eventually asks for her take on the Sinclair story, Cady says she's 'just really not into fairytales anymore,' and runs off to steal her family's boat and flee the island. Her mother and aunts watch from afar, proud to see her breaking free. We Were Liars ends its first-season run not with a scene between Cady and her Liars but between Aunt Carrie and the ghost of her son, Johnny. As Carrie prepares to leave Beechwood at the end of the summer, she walks back inside her kitchen, only to find Johnny—or, rather, his presence—waiting for her. When she says she'd thought he'd 'left' by now, he replies, 'I don't think I can.' The screen then cuts to black. That leaves one major question unanswered. Forget whether or not the Liars are 'ghosts' or 'spirits' or hallucinations. We know they're dead. But if one of them 'can't leave' Beechwood, does that mean he's stuck forever? And if Johnny is stuck, are the other Liars stuck, too? With Cadence gone, can they 'pass on' without her? Or will Carrie take up the mantle as their sole witness? Such a cliffhanger is certainly set up as a lead-in for a potential We Were Liars season 2, which could draw material from Lockhart's prequel novel, Family of Liars. (That book indeed centers Carrie and her sisters as teenagers on Beechwood.) Still, there's no guarantee yet whether Prime Video will end up renewing the series. For now, Johnny will just have to wait.
Elle
11 hours ago
- Elle
The Books You Should Actually Be Reading This Summer, According to ELLE Editors
For those of us who believe a packed bag is never complete without two (or ten) books, summer is our time. Nothing compares to the euphoria of a wide-open weekend, warm weather, a good book, a good view, and a sweating glass of something close at hand. If you're craving such synergy, perhaps the trickiest question isn't even where to go; it's what to bring with you. Still, the very definition of 'beach read' is fluid, subject to your taste. With that in mind, ELLE editors have compiled a list of new summer books that run the gamut between realism and fantasy, romance and horror, literary and breezy—with the hopes you'll find a read to fit your itinerary. Without further ado, below are our picks for the best books of summer 2025, as defined by the months of June, July, and August. Don't forget your sunscreen. With contributions from Kayla Webley Adler, Sara Austin, Moriel Mizrahi Finder, Adrienne Gaffney, and Kathleen Hou. Out now. 'In S.A. Cosby's riveting crime thriller King of Ashes, investment manager Roman Carruthers wakes from a dream of his mother—who went missing when he and his siblings were teenagers—only to discover his father has been in a terrible accident. Roman returns home to the former manufacturing epicenter known as Jefferson Run, Virginia, where his sister, Neveah, is struggling to keep the family crematorium running. But it's their brother, Dante, who's in the worst trouble of their trio. As Roman and Neveah discover that their father's accident was no accident at all, they learn Dante is in debt to a dangerous local gang, and Roman's deep pockets might not be enough to placate them. The criminals want Roman's skills, and soon he's embedded with them, fighting for his family while wrestling with the morality—or lack thereof—of his choices. Cosby drives his readers through the story at full-throttle, and yet little ends up rushed: His characters are deeply crafted, and the issues at the heart of his epic are rightfully complex. This is yet another smash hit from the author of All the Sinners Bleed.'—Lauren Puckett-Pope, culture writer ''I grew up fully aware that my father was a brilliant man whose expertise I should never ever question. Did I believe that he was a good man? That's another question entirely,' writes Janelle Brown—from the perspective of her protagonist, Jane—in What Kind of Paradise, a perfect sort of immersive, tantalizing, thought-provoking summer read. The novel centers Jane, who grew up idolizing her father and adhering to his isolationism during her off-the-grid upbringing in mid-'90s rural Montana. But when he decides to publish an anti-tech manifesto and she becomes his inadvertent accomplice-in-crime, Jane ultimately makes a run for it. She lands in the tech mecca of San Francisco, where she hopes to learn the truth about her mother's long-ago death whilst immersing herself in the very technology her father condemns. A thriller and a coming-of-age saga, What Kind of Paradise is a gripping reckoning with family, AI, and what we do in the pursuit of progress.'—LPP Out now.'Early in Susan Choi's latest book, 10-year-old Louisa and her father disappear on a beach. Only one of them will eventually be found. What begins as a standard thriller veers in an unexpected direction as Louisa's parents' histories—her mother's estrangement from her American family and her father's from his in North Korea—become an inescapable factor in this story from the National Book Award-winning author of Trust Exercise. '—Adrienne Gaffney, features editor Out now. 'I'll Tell You When I'm Home is not a straightforward story, but neither is Hala Alyan's. Told in hundreds of bite-sized segments that give her memoir the rhythm of her poetry, Alyan threads together 11 chapters, each organized by a month in the growth cycle of a fetus. (For example, 'Month Three: Your baby has fingers and toes,' and 'Month Seven: Your baby is the size of a coconut.') These passages provide entry points for Alyan to organize—and attempt to make sense of—her ancestral history; her frequent displacement throughout childhood; her relationships; her struggles with addiction, disordered eating, and sobriety; and, after multiple miscarriages, her journey to have a child via surrogate. 'I have never not been Palestinian,' she writes in one section. 'That has never not been written upon my body.' And it is in the writing about her body—its history, its travel, its desires, its pains, its othering, its future, its continuation in the tiny form of her child—that Alyan triumphs. This is a beautiful, soul-bearing book.'—LPP Out now.'A recent college graduate, David Smith is torn between two identities—that of a wealthy Stanford grad and of a Black, queer man. When he's arrested for drug possession, he realizes that the world of elite misbehavior that his friends live in is one that he cannot fully join. Author Rob Franklin beautifully illustrates the bubbly excesses of youth coming up against the sobering realities of racism, addiction, and violence.'—AG Out now. 'A quick read—the kind you can definitely finish in a couple summer afternoons—Jess Walter's latest crackles with the author's wit, even whilst immersing itself in the thick of modern American woes. So Far Gone's protagonist is Rhys Kinnick, a former environmental journalist who opts for an off-the-grid lifestyle after a seismic clash with his son-in-law, a conspiracy theorist whose repeated tirades about 'secular globalists' and the 'lame-stream media' ultimately push Kinnick over the edge. But when, years later, his grandchildren show up outside Kinnick's door, their mother inexplicably missing, Kinnick is pulled into a zany adventure (with an equally entertaining ensemble cast) as he attempts to bring his family back together.'—LPP 'In this superb speculative tale from the author of Lakewood, seven strange and inexplicable portals appear in random locations around the planet. These portals inspire fear and awe and, in some, faith. Years after the doors' appearance, twin daughters Ayanna and Olivia live separately, each with a different parent: Ayanna with their father, who grew up in a religious group devoted to one of the portals, and Olivia with their mother, a traditional Roman Catholic. When Ayanna comes of age and is called to step through the portal, Olivia decides to join her—but then Olivia goes missing. Meet Me at the Crossroads is a stirring, meditative story of spirituality, family, and the desire to love deeply in a difficult world.'—LPP ''How do we not lose ourselves in love? How do we hold on to our beliefs and our ethics in the face of great feeling?' Melissa Febos proposed these questions to me during our ELLE interview last October, during which she announced her next book: The Dry Season, a memoir about her year abstaining from sex. As Febos put it, she spent that year 'trying to let go of this lineage that I think I had belonged to, involuntarily, of these overemotional, romantic people who were thrown around by love and romance and very obsessive and out of control. I spent this time looking for people who had big, self-actualized, beautiful, art-oriented lives that didn't necessarily exclude love, but weren't ruled by it—or at least by this romantic fantasy of it.' Her resulting memoir is indeed 'self-actualized, beautiful, and art-oriented,' weaving literary, cultural, and historical touchstones with her own experience. As Febos showed us with her previous books, including Girlhood and Body Work, it is always a privilege to ponder the big questions through her distinct lens.'—LPP 'After V. E. Schwab's 2020 bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue blew up during the pandemic, fans have eagerly awaited the next stand-alone adult novel from the author known for her grounded fantasy stories. In Bury Our Bones, which Schwab calls her 'toxic lesbian vampires' book, three women navigate centuries of blood lust in this portrait of queer identity, feminine resilience, and unrelenting thirst. This is without a doubt one of my favorite fantasies of the year.'—LPP Out now.''Few things have I been surer of: the woman at the front at the top row of my double decker is my mother.' And so Yrsa Daley-Ward introduces us to the central conceit at the heart of her debut novel, in which Clara, a high-profile author, sees her long-missing mother in the middle of London—and she looks far younger than her would-be 60-odd years. Who, then, is this woman? Clara's twin sister, Dempsey, thinks she is a con artist. Clara is less convinced. But the story only grows stranger when we learn this version of their mother is childless; she never gave birth to Clara or Dempsey. On top of that, Daley-Ward incorporates a book-within-a-book approach that plants pieces of Clara's blockbuster novel, Evidence, alongside her mother's writing. The results are strange, kaleidoscopic, smart—difficult to describe but hypnotic in their pull. The Catch is a mind-bending feat.'—LPP Out now.'I'll devour just about anything written by or about Toni Morrison, whose incomparable works of literature—including Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula, and so many others—continue to inspire readers decades after their publication. But I, along with many others, have understood Morrison mainly in this context: as an author. So it's a gift to peek behind the curtain of Morrison's indeed 'legendary' editorship at Random House (from 1965 through 1983) in Dana A. Williams's Toni at Random. This biography, of course, is intriguing for those of us obsessed with the ins and outs of publishing, but even readers less inclined to weigh the industry's merits will find material to appreciate in Williams's account. Although the book skews occasionally academic, Toni at Random is also a balanced and fascinatingly well-researched account of Morrison's editorial vision—and how it still impacts what we read today.'—LPP 'Despite having no sisters, I love and crave stories of sisterhood. And Kakigori Summer is a tale of sisterhood as delicious and finely textured as the shaved-ice dessert its protagonists relish in, and from which the book draws its title. Bittersweet, nostalgic, and easy to envision, Emily Itami's novel introduces us to three sisters: Rei, a driven finance worker in London; Kiki, a Tokyo-based single mother and retirement home employee; and Ali, a J-pop star whose scandalous kiss with a married man draws the paparazzi a little too close. Rei and Kiki rush in to offer Ali some much-needed insulation, and the three escape to the coastal Japanese town where their grandmother still resides. Over the course of the summer, they reckon with their relationship to one another, as well as the loss of their mother years prior. The coastal setting is itself a character in this book, and perhaps one of the book's biggest selling points—Itami makes the landscape feel as real as the bond between the sisters. A lovely, tender-hearted tale.'—LPP 'In this whimsical beach read from Ashley Poston, known for her magical love stories, songwriter Joni Lark is suffering from a bout of writer's block. She heads home to North Carolina, where her parents want to close the family-owned music venue. But then Joni realizes she has a telepathic connection with a has-been musician. Can they use their link to write the perfect song—and save the summer?'—LPP 'Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest heroine is going to space. In 1980, astrophysics professor Joan's unexpected selection for NASA's Space Shuttle program puts her in line to be one of the first female astronauts. Atmosphere tells Joan's gripping, sensitive, and romantic story of finding love in a career where disaster is a constant threat.'—AG 'A gorgeous queer literary romance, Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love depicts the second-chance romance between former teenage girlfriends Emily and Gen. Years have passed since their relationship ended, and Emily is now married with two children, an Upper East Side townhouse, and an abusive hedge-fund-manager husband she met at Harvard. Gen, meanwhile, is a world-renowned Olympic athlete. When Emily and Gen reunite, much has changed about them both—but the chemistry between them remains. As Emily wrestles with a separation from her husband and all that it portends, she must also contend with Gen's reappearance in her life. There is still anger and hurt between them, and Emily isn't sure she can handle any more emotional damage after years of her husband's abuse. But the connection Gen and Emily share is maybe, just maybe, worth fighting to keep.'—LPP Out June 24. 'Within the first few pages of Hal Ebbott's debut novel Among Friends, I knew I needed to go scrounge up a highlighter. There are so many of Ebbott's lines that sing, each of them elegant and insightful in their clarity. (Here's one favorite: 'They were like scars, these talents, like things learned in war: even when they were of use, part of her wished not to know.') The book depicts the seemingly effortless friendship between two families—and particularly between their two patriarchs, Amos and Emerson, who first met in college. Although their backgrounds couldn't be more different, they are drawn together, their trust implicit and undeniable. Decades later, they remain close friends, as are their wives and daughters, and the families reunite for a weekend upstate—a yearly tradition amongst their group. But when one of them chooses to wield their power in a shocking act of abuse, they each are given a choice: Continue as if nothing's happened, or reckon with the rot that's always been present in their lives. Among Friends is utterly engrossing; I'm already begging my friends to read it so we can discuss the ending.'—LPP 'By now Lisa Jewell is well-beloved for the addicting quality of her thrillers, and her latest, Don't Let Him In, is no exception. From the first page, the book feels taut with danger, its characters tangled in a web they can't yet recognize. The plot is shaped like a classic domestic suspense: A man is not who he says he is. (He is, in fact, utterly awful!) But the identity of that man is not initially known to the women in his life, including a widow named Nina, her daughter, Ash, and a local florist named Martha, whose lives unexpectedly intersect when this man's charm proves a horrible facade. I can't reveal much more without spoiling Jewell's twists, but suffice to say, this is one of those gripping beach reads sure to keep you flipping the pages on your next flight.'—LPP Out June 24. 'Adela's parents are furious when she becomes pregnant at 16, and they quickly send her to live with her grandmother in Florida. But what was intended as a punishment turns into something beautiful. What she finds in her new home is an incredible community of teenage moms, girls who have been looked down on by their community but who have created a family together. Mottley shows that while young mothers face incredible challenges, their lives can still be full of extraordinary love and joy.'—AG Out June 24.'Leesa Cross-Smith—the author behind Half-Blown Rose and This Close to Okay, among others—turns her eye for intimate connection toward three Americans adrift in Seoul in As You Wish. Lydia, Jenny, and Selene have arrived as au pairs hoping to rewrite their own scripts: Lydia longs for a main-character life, Jenny is determined to put romance firmly in the rear view, and Selene believes South Korea holds the key to finding the birth mother she's never met. Their paths—and secret wishes—intertwine on a weekend trip to a mythic waterfall said to grant desires. When one of them circles back for a do-over, the ripple effect forces all three to reckon with what they truly want and what they're willing to risk for it, turning a fizzy drama into something richer: a meditation on friendship as the greatest magic of all. The result is a cozy escape that reminds us every wish carries its own shadow—and that sometimes the happiest ending is finding the people who understand yours.'—Moriel Mizrahi Finder, editorial assistant 'Pitched as Love Island meets Lord of the Flies—which, woof, that's enough of a heady concoction to draw in readers already—Aisling Rawle's debut is an intoxicating literary suspense. It takes place on the set of a reality dating competition—filmed in a desert compound sometime in a dystopian future—in which an uneven number of male and female contestants must compete to spend each night with someone of the opposite sex. Along the way, they must complete tasks and competitions for rewards. Some are relatively harmless ('Wear another girl's clothes without asking'), while others ('Banish a couple from the compound') veer darker. At the center of this game is Lily, who is young, beautiful, and content to do whatever it takes to win. A slow-burning but scathing assessment of consumerism, vanity, and our deep-rooted desires to perform.'—LPP
