With finals in full swing, and prelims just around the corner, Oxford’s libraries are full to the brim and SOLO is open at all times. Despite easy access to every book published in Britain, courtesy of the Bodleian, each exam season I have found myself daydreaming of walking into Blackwell’s and buying the trashiest romance novel I could find. Luckily, like clockwork, each year Emily Henry brings out a summer bestseller and as Trinity draws to its close I swiftly transition from clunky reading lists to endearingly predictable romances that pull me out from the academic trenches into a world that makes me giggle and cringe on buses, benches, and my bed.
Having studied literature for years, I will always be a defender of the trashy romance genre. These books do what they say on the tin, or, that is, what the near-identical abstract covers emblazoned with big white letters promise. They are light-hearted, fast-paced, easy to read, and most importantly, they allow you to flex your reading muscles again. Each year, when I turn to read one, whether sitting in my family’s garden with my ginger dog, on a beach squinting behind sunglasses, during cosy evenings off from my internship, or on Balliol’s quad, I remember why I love to read. When your reading is not stuccoed by analysis of metre and metaphors and note-taking, books can again transport you. With reading for pleasure dusted off and rediscovered, you can then turn to books that inspire fewer eye-rolls and finally read them without a critical eye always ready to pounce.
Here, then, are some recommendations of books to read in those lulls between exams when you can’t face blurting anymore, or for your post-exams rest, or, if you are a finalist, as a distraction from the post-exam panic of ‘what next?’.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Book Lovers is a cosy enemy-to-lovers story about a literary agent, Nora, and Charlie, her nemesis and an editor who works for the same publishing house. Nora (who has a tramp stamp of the RadCam) goes on a getaway with her sister to the picture-perfect American town ‘Sunshine Falls’. But the getaway is interrupted when she bumps into – you guessed it – Charlie. Trapped together in the town, and on a new work project, the pair slowly overcome their differences. Like many of Henry’s books, the story follows family conflicts, monetary issues, and many other seemingly mundane anxieties of life, before tying each thread up with a pithy ending that leaves you missing the wit and comforting predictability of her characters.
Funny Story by Emily Henry
When my exams ended last week one of the first things I did was head to Waterstones, still in my sub fusc and red carnation. Before heading to the King’s Arms, and whilst tourists gawked at the strange dress, I bought Henry’s 2024 novel Funny Story as my friend bought Book Lovers. I wanted a kitsch romantic novel, and that’s exactly what I got. Funny Story sees Daphne and Miles thrown together when their partners, childhood best friends, realise they have been in love with each other all along. This double betrayal leads them to live together and when they receive an invitation to their respective ex’s wedding, they RSVP as a couple themselves. Henry lays the perfect foundation for a fake relationship trope that sees, to no one’s surprise, something genuine develop. Whilst a relationship blooming out of the carcasses of two others, and the fact they initially bond through mutual heartbreak, was a slightly uncomfortable premise, the character-building swiftly made up for this. The ending, like many of Henry’s, is somewhat sudden, but very sweet, and the book becomes a meditation on finding belonging and community in new places and circumstances.
Daisy Jones and the Six byTaylor Jenkins Reid
Now a series starring Riley Keogh, Sam Claflin, and Suki Waterhouse, Daisy Jones follows a struggling rock band who meet the socialite singer Daisy Jones, and subsequently have an astronomical rise to fame in the 70s. Like her The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Jenkins Reid draws on recent histories of fame to create a dizzying and chaotic story reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s turbulence. It is full of forbidden love, sex, addiction, and lots of rock-and-roll. Their fallout is explosive, emotional, and makes it a struggle to put down. One of the best consequences of its adaptation into a series is that there is now a full soundtrack of the songs in the book available on Spotify, but I would still recommend listening to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Silver Springs’ whilst reading.
The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas
Catalina Martin is going back to Spain for her sister’s wedding. Her ex-boyfriend is also invited, so she is desperate, naturally, for a date. Armas collides the fake-relationship and enemies-to-lovers tropes as Catalina’s colleague Aaron overhears her lie one evening in the office that she has a very handsome American boyfriend, and chivalrously offers to step in and get a free trip to Spain. Desperate to save face, she accepts, and what follows is a trip full of sun, Spanish beaches, romance, drama and dancing. It’s a perfect light-hearted book for a post-exam summer.
Honourable mentions:
Henry’s Beach Read is a fun story about two authors afflicted with writer’s block who decide to switch genres and later bodily fluids, but it was a slog to read and has a disappointing lack of beaches.
Ali Hazlewood’s The Love Hypothesis follows the classic fake-relationship trope, this time between a supervisor and a researcher. It was toe-curlingly, throw-the-book-across-the room cringe. Warning if you read – as an academic spin on the ‘one-bed trope’, there is instead only one seat left at a conference.
You have to accept these books in all their cringe-worthy and blobby, abstract-art glory. They probably won’t change your life, or leave you in a pit of emptiness for days, like a truly good book would, but they will revive your ability for leisurely reading after exam season and hopefully help you to unwind during some well-deserved rest. And, after all, isn’t that what every finalist needs?
