Sunny Hostin on how she’s shaking up the beach-read genre with ‘Summer on Sag Harbor’

What’s better than curling up on the beach with a good book?

To The View co-host and author Sunny Hostin, whose new novel Summer on Sag Harbor is available now in bookstores everywhere, there is little else that compares.

“People are always surprised that I love a good, sexy beach read,” Hostin told ABC Audio. “I enjoy sitting on the beach and reading a book like that.”

Hostin’s new novel is the second installment in her trilogy of beach reads, which focuses on stories of women of color in a genre that has historically neglected diversity.

“I thought of Toni Morrison saying, ‘If there’s a book you want to read and you can’t find it, then you write it,’” Hostin said. “It’s amazing to me the thirst that was out there for the first book. And I realized that people were looking for what I was looking for.”

And now that thirst has resulted in a TV adaptation. While she can’t share which streamer will release it just yet, Hostin recalls sharing the first novel in the series, Summer on the Bluffs, with Octavia Spencer. At the time, she had no idea where it would lead.

“I actually thought maybe she would post something on Instagram for me. And she called me and said, ‘Let me tell you why I should be your production partner.’”

Hostin says her The View co-host Joy Behar has also shown support along the way. According to Hostin, Behar is “the reason why the protagonist in the first book is in her 60s finding love again.”

“She basically said to me, ‘Don’t forget women in their 60s still have sex, OK?’ And I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll write to that,’” Hostin said. “It resonated like crazy.”

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