Summer is just around the corner and that means it’s time to plan your summer reading list! Whether you’re reading on a beach, at a cottage, on a plane or in your own backyard – there’s no better time than summer to escape with a good book!!
My reading recommendations for the best books to read summer 2026 include recently published or soon-to-be-published contemporary fiction, historical fiction, romance, and mysteries/thrillers that I have already read or that are on my own TBR list for this summer.
Most of my summer reading picks are on the lighter side but there are a few that are more serious for when you’re looking for a book with a bit more substance.
Enjoy a fun-filled summer of books!!
Note: I read across a lot of genres and I only choose books that I have already read or plan to read over the coming weeks for my book lists. If I haven’t yet read the book when I publish the book list then I include the blurb provided by the publisher and update the article with my own thoughts after I read it. I also make a conscious effort to try and include diversity in the books I choose to read. Some of the buzziest books of the season are on my lists but I hope I also introduce you to some titles that you might not have heard of otherwise.
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40 of the Best Books to Read This Summer (2025)
35 of the Best Books to Read Summer 2024
35 of the Best Books to Read Summer 2023
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1. Land by Maggie O’Farrell
Setting: Ireland
FROM THE PUBLISHER: On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times and for all time.
2. Whistler by Ann Patchett
Setting: Primarily New York City
Daphne Fuller is strolling through the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her husband when they notice an older gentleman who seems to be following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, Daphne’s former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than a year when Daphne was nine. Although she hasn’t seen him in almost 45 years, their reunion causes Daphne to realize just how important Eddie was in her life and how much she has missed him.
Whistler is told over two timelines with narrative flashbacks to the traumatic car accident that Daphne and Eddie experienced when she was 9 woven into the present day story of their reunion and resumption of a father/daughter relationship. More of a character study without much in the way of plot, Whistler is a moving story about family, enduring love, memories, reconciliation and the power of storytelling. I loved this quiet, heartwarming story – Daphne and Eddie felt like people I knew and I didn’t want to let them go!
3. Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
Setting: Tofino, British Columbia, Canada
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Frankie and George have been best friends since they were eight years old. Both passionate, impulsive, and headstrong—they’ve always clashed . . . and come back together. Until now. It’s the eve of Frankie’s wedding weekend, and she doesn’t know where they stand or even if George will show up as her best man.
Then, at the start of the festivities, in walks George. For one glorious evening, surrounded by her loved ones, Frankie’s life is finally perfect. But it all comes crashing down when her fiancé dumps her the next morning, leaving only a note as an explanation.
Crushed and confused, Frankie returns to her family’s home to wallow. But George has a different idea and a plan for healing Frankie’s broken heart. He wants her to go on her honeymoon. With him. For one week, to the lush rainforests and misty beaches of Tofino.
Frankie agrees, seeing the trip for what it really is: one last chance to repair their friendship. Even if it means unearthing secrets and long buried feelings neither knows how to handle. Even if it means falling apart for good.
4. Take Me With You by Steven Rowley
Setting: Joshua Tree, California
FROM THE PUBLISHER: College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband, Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and . . . disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly . . . will he ever return? Jesse knew they were both feeling stuck, longing for something they couldn’t quite name. But was their rut so deep that Norman’s only option was to leave Jesse behind?
As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?
When Norman’s sister, Lally, lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.
5. The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza
Setting: Paris, France
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, thought she had left her dreams behind when she took a job cleaning for the city’s wealthy elite. Then she meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. The Swansons move in a world where billionaires, oligarchs, and heads of state pay fortunes for masterpieces. Drawn in by their dazzling wealth and the pull of a dangerously charming grandson, Emma becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes.
In the late 1800s, the young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law Vincent that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, and to secure a future for herself and her young son, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. As her devotion deepens, a vanished painting and a thwarted love affair leave her unsure who she can trust and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.
From glittering auction houses to the idyllic canals of Amsterdam and the grand museums of Paris, the lives of these two women converge as Emma uncovers the Swanson family’s darkest secrets and agrees to mastermind a daring heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. The stakes have never been higher, and these women refuse to be written out of history, no matter the cost.
6. The Forgotten Midwife by Laura Anthony
Setting: New Jersey and Ireland
In present day New Jersey, Riley Carmichael is excited about her upcoming wedding but a bit sad that her only family is her grandmother who is in a care home with dementia. During a period of lucidity, Riley’s grandmother presents her with a birth certificate for a baby born in Ireland in the 1950s and Riley and her husband-to-be embark on a trip to Ireland to find out more about her heritage.
In the historical timeline set in Tipperary, Ireland in the 1950s, Margaret Lannigan is planning her future with the love of her life, Joseph, when her older sister dies suddenly. For generations, the eldest Lannigan daughter has joined the Sisters of Mercy nuns so Margaret is forced to take the veil in her sister’s place and is sent to work in a home for girls who fell pregnant outside of marriage.
The Forgotten Midwife is dual timeline historical fiction about Ireland’s Catholic church-run Magdalene Laundries which functioned as workhouses for “fallen” women. Extensively researched and well-written, it’s a moving, inspiring (and at times infuriating) story about the lack of agency women had in the 1950s, female friendship and the resilience and courage of a young woman determined to help those in her care. While I have read other books about young girls being confined to these homes, it was quite interesting in this novel to get the perspective of a young woman forced to become a nun and work in one of the laundries. I didn’t find the modern day timeline as compelling but I loved the book overall.
7. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Setting: New York City
FROM THE PUBLISHER: 1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.
1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence—Pepper is a native speaker.
1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.
8. Road Trip by Mary Kay Andrews
Setting: Mostly in a fictional small town in Ireland
Maeve and Therese Dunigan, estranged sisters from Savannah, Georgia, are reunited after the death of their mother and discover they have inherited a painting which might be worth millions – if it’s real. Their mother also left behind a coffee can full of money for her daughters to take a trip to Ireland so Maeve and Therese travel to the land of their ancestors hoping to solve the mystery of the painting of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat their great-grandmother, Kathleen O’Connor, brought to the U.S. when she emigrated. There’s also a past timeline from the perspective of Kathleen that fills in her story.
Road Trip is an easy summer beach read (although a bit on the longer side at almost 450 pages) combining a story of family with mystery, romance and historical fiction set primarily in a fictional small town in Ireland.
I usually love the author’s books but found this one a bit disappointing mostly due to my own expectations. Having road tripped around Ireland on a couple of occasions myself, I was hoping to relive those experiences but there isn’t a road trip in this book despite the title. The sisters pick up a rental car at the Dublin airport and drive to the fictional town of Tarrymore in County Wicklow where they spend most of their time in Ireland. But what really bothered me was that the two times that they ventured out of town made no sense geographically from their home base in County Wicklow – a day trip to Cobh for research and to Dingle on the opposite side of the country for a day of sightseeing would be hours of driving in each direction. It just didn’t make sense and took me out of the story.
This was just an okay read for me but I seem to be an outlier as the ratings indicate that most readers are enjoying it more than I did.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
9. The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb
Setting: Washington, DC
FROM THE PUBLISHER: 1919, Washington D.C. Elisabeth Beaumont comes from a renowned jeweler family, but after the untimely death of her twin brother, she’s left on her own to run the failing family business. Desperate for work, she approaches the affluent crowd her brother Julien once courted to expand Beaumont Jewelers. Their ringleader is wealthy socialite Evalyn McLean, owner of the world’s most infamous gemstone, rumored to curse all who travel within its orbit.
The Hope Diamond.
As Elisabeth is swept into Evalyn’s toxic world of dark opulence, the lines defining who she is and where she belongs begin to blur, leading Elisabeth to question all she once believed. She’s no longer certain she wants to take over the family business and be beholden to the wealthy elite of D.C. But she can’t fathom leaving her father in the lurch. There’s also Evalyn to consider, and the Hope Diamond, which beckons Elisabeth to admire it, touch it, care for it, despite every warning she’s been told.
When tragedy strikes one night, not only is Elisabeth’s fragile friendship with Evalyn put to the test, but her carefully constructed glamorous new life comes crashing down. Now Elisabeth must face the truth about her brother’s death and decide what matters most.
10. The Shippers by Katherine Center
Setting: Caribbean Cruise
JoJo recently left her fiancé at the altar after her childhood bestie, Cooper, arrived unexpectedly and made her realize that she didn’t have to go through with it. A few weeks later, JoJo is still grappling with her commitment issues when she arrives for her sister’s 8 day cruise destination wedding and discovers that Cooper, who RSVPd no, has shown up. Using some dubious pop psychology, her sister has convinced JoJo that her relationship issues stem from the fact that she imprinted on Finn who was her childhood crush and first kiss. The only way to get closure is to woo Finn who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest and she needs Cooper’s help to make that happen.
This is a cute childhood-friends-to-lovers romance that’s heavy on the comedy with zero spice and a boatload of miscommunication. I enjoyed the cruise ship setting and Cooper is very sweet – the perfect male main character. JoJo, on the other hand, is a bit immature and makes some incredibly bad choices. The hijinx get a little out of hand and it’s a bit predictable yet still a fun read – overall, a light and entertaining romance read ideal for summer beach reading.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
11. Some People by Parini Shroff
Setting: United States
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Malti Patel is absolutely fine. Concussed and bruised, maybe, but fine. Certainly fine enough to not need her daughter’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Nathan Whitlock, playing nurse in her home while she recuperates. And yet, that’s exactly the quandary in which she finds herself. Her doctor insists on in-home supervision for seven days, and with her daughter, Kavya, abroad at grad school in India, Nathan proves too much of a do-gooder to let Malti rehabilitate alone. Seven days of Nathan, the man divorcing her daughter for all manner of reasons: cultural misunderstanding, emotional walls, simmering hostility…most of them having to do with Kavya’s baggage from her childhood.
They want nothing to do with one another. But over the course of the week, as Malti grapples with the shadows of her past and Nathan ponders the wreckage of his marriage, they learn that they are the two people who know Kavya best—and the ones who have hurt her so deeply that she’s left them both.
12. The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung
Setting: Washington, DC; Ohio and Hong Kong
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese American and former food blogger, has long lived in the shadow of her mother, Vivien Li― a Tiananmen Square dissident turned world-renowned human rights activist and passionate advocate for a free and democratic China.
When security and fire alarms go off simultaneously all around the world, setting off a panic, the signal is traced back to China. As world leaders scramble to respond, Vivien and Alice are called to the White House in hopes Madame Li can interpret the Chinese intentions. But why involve Alice?
If China isn’t behind the attack, Vivien warns, someone even more dangerous is pulling the strings. Mother and daughter must join together to overcome their estrangement if they have any hope of preventing global catastrophe. From DC to Ohio to Hong Kong, they work to prevent the next attack, along the way decoding an ancient legend and uncovering a secret language invented by women, for women.
13. Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel
Setting: Paris, France
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time—but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she’s ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future.
Rock star Jackson Quick’s glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn’t toured in a decade. This week, he’ll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who he is at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet.
Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades—including Jackson Quick’s biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he’s ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died—but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he’s on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he’s written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other—and to tell her he came back for her?
Henry’s granddaughter, Melody, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone?
14. Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See
Setting: Los Angeles
Daughters of the Sun and Moon is historical fiction about three young Chinese women from different backgrounds who meet in the post-Civil War pueblo of Los Angeles in 1870. Moon is the educated wife of a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who speaks English and assists her husband with his practice. Dove is the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar and has travelled to America for an arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the daughter of peasants, was sold by her father and transported to America where she was purchased and taken to Los Angeles to work in a brothel. Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, the three women face a society where anti-Asian racism is on the rise and eventually results in the Night of Horrors massacre of Chinese immigrant men and boys.
This is another interesting and meticulously researched historical fiction novel from Lisa See inspired by historical figures and events. The story is told using alternating narratives with Petal telling her own story at the time events were occurring, Dove’s point-of-view narrated in the third person, and Moon as an elderly woman in 1926 looking back and reflecting on her past. It was an educational read regarding a forgotten and heartbreaking chapter of U.S. history as I knew nothing of this horrific massacre nor was I familiar with the fact that Chinese women were being sold by their families and transported to the U.S. where they were required to work as prostitutes. Chinese traditional medicine is also an important aspect of the plot which was quite interesting.
Daughters of the Sun and Moon is a moving story of resilience that shows how female friendship provides support in the most difficult of circumstances. It’s quite good, however, I didn’t find this one as engaging as the previous novels that I have read by the author.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
15. A Fortune of Sand by Ruta Sepetys
Setting: Detroit, Michigan
1927 – Marjorie Lennox, the youngest daughter of a wealthy family who made their fortune through a glass making business started by her grandfather and now run by her father, is a whimsical artist who is out of step with most of her family. Seeking to define herself on her own terms, she secretly applies and is accepted to an exclusive artist residency in Detroit but, almost as soon as she arrives, Marjorie realizes that there is something off with the uncomfortably restrictive rules, strange noises after dark, elusive benefactor and whispers that women are disappearing.
Set in Prohibition Era Detroit, this latest historical fiction novel from Ruta Sepetys feels a bit different than her earlier novels. This is her adult debut and it’s well-written and researched – a historical mystery of sorts – but it gets off to a slow start and I had trouble really connecting to any of the characters. It is very atmospheric of the time period and is based on real history involving women lacking agency and being locked up for no reason which was both informative and interesting but I didn’t find the storylines or characters as compelling as those in her three YA books that I have read.
Reviews are mixed on this one so judge for yourself particularly if you’re a fan of Sepetys’s previous books – it’s not bad, just not my favourite of hers.
16. Most Ardently Yours by Freya Sampson
Setting: London, England
Zoe Knight is a struggling romance writer who has sworn off chasing happily-ever-afters with men in real life and spends time with her book boyfriends instead. One day she stumbles into a London bookshop during a downpour, argues with the owner Nick who refuses to stock romance novels and runs off with a dusty old copy of Pride and Prejudice.
This is no ordinary book though because later the same night Zoe falls asleep reading it on the bus and the following morning Mr. Darcy turns up at the literary-themed cafe where she works. But as much as Zoe is enjoying having Darcy around, she is concerned it will impact the story if he stays with her in London and Nick might be the only one who can help get Mr. Darcy back where he belongs.
I love everything about Jane Austen – especially Pride and Prejudice – so there’s no doubt that I was the reader this book was written for! Set in modern day London, Most Ardently Yours is a romance (with some magical realism) featuring an aspiring writer who prefers to spend time with her book boyfriends because they never disappoint but may be missing out on finding happiness as a result. A charming read for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to meet Mr. Darcy in real life!
17. Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan
Setting: Rhode Island
FROM THE PUBLISHER: If they start by pretending, can they end with something real?
Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn’t solve. Not when her mom left when she was twelve, and not at thirty-nine when she moves with her son back to Whitfield, Rhode Island, for the summer to keep her dad and brother from losing the family home.
So when she comes across Stewart Whitfield—annoyingly handsome scion of the Whitfield family—with a flat tire and at the wrong end of a very public, very humiliating breakup, it’s in her nature to help. But Stewart’s proposed arrangement ends up being more than either of them bargained for, because as public dinners and high-society benefits turn into sunset boat rides and kisses that hit her bloodstream like a ghost pepper, Dolly starts to feel something more than helpful. She’s never relied on anyone besides herself—can she really start now?
18. Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer
Setting: Tuscany, Italy
FROM THE PUBLISHER: An aspiring archivist determined to begin a “serious” life after an undistinguished undergraduate career takes up residence in the Italian countryside. Here, he becomes the all-purpose assistant to the Baronessa, known to her friends as Coco, a defiantly youthful and naturally flamboyant woman of ninety-two. Amid a chaotic and colorful milieu of gin-swilling princesses, incomprehensible handymen, roaming boarhunters, nuns, and other local wildlife, our young man does his best to catalog the villa’s extensive collection of art and antiques—although he notices that things seem to go missing from right under his nose.
Despite himself, he tumbles into an affair with a married man, complicating his future plans considerably. And when the Baronessa loses someone close to her, he becomes an unwitting accomplice in the acceleration of Coco’s great and final plan: to locate the love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late. Told with the signature wit, charm, and humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself, a meditation on how seriously we ought to take ourselves, and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who we’ve always wanted to be.
19. A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Setting: New York City
In 1930s New York City, assistant district attorney Eunice Carter is a trailblazer as the first Black female prosecutor in the city. The DA’s office where she works has been focused on their investigation of mob boss Lucky Luciano for his crime syndicate’s traditional businesses of bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking and drug dealing but without success. Eunice has an idea to pursue a conviction for his role in the city’s prostitution business but to do so she will need help from an insider.
Polly Adler runs a high-class brothel business in the city with a client list that includes prominent men both famous and infamous but when Lucky Luciano’s actions put her girls in danger, Polly knows she has to do something. These two women from vastly different worlds risk their own lives as they work together building a case that will put Luciano behind bars.
Inspired by a true story, this historical fiction novel by the authors of The Personal Librarian is an enjoyable pageturner. It’s well-researched and well-written with a very compelling story and I was completely invested in following Eunice and Polly as they built the case against Luciano and his associates. As a lawyer, I particularly enjoyed learning about Eunice who was an intelligent and hard-working women making her mark in the legal field at a time when the odds were completely stacked against her.
I enjoy reading historical fiction that introduces me to real people or historical events and always appreciate an author’s note like what’s included here outlining what is true and what has been imagined or were liberties have been taken with the facts for the sake of the story. In this case both women are real and the story of Eunice’s involvement in the Luciano case is true but there’s no evidence that Polly Adler worked with her in any capacity.
20. Man Overboard by Kathleen Rooney
Setting: The Ocean
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Patrick “Kick” Kilpatrick hates the ocean. Has always been terrified of it. And now he’s in a real pickle.
Drifting alone in the sea after falling (or jumping? He can’t remember as the all-inclusive drinks on the cruise he was taking with his extended family were, well, inclusive) Kick must survive. Breath by breath, hour by hour in the lonely sea.
As the waves crash over him, so too do the thoughts and memories of just how he got there. A Thanksgiving cruise with an obnoxious brother-in-law he has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming at. A father who gives the Great Santini a run for his money. And a mother, who already left the family boat, so to speak, a long time ago. His family may be complicated, and the pains of life may seem unbearable—infuriating enough to leap from the deck—but maybe the will to survive is stronger.
21. The Top of the World by Ethan Joella
Setting: A resort in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania
Set over the summers of 1974 and 1975 at a resort in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, The Top of the World is an emotional story about teenage siblings only a year apart in age.
After receiving a devastating diagnosis at the beginning of summer 1974, recent high school graduate Chip Bishop leaves home without telling his family and spends his summer working in the Poconos at the Red Maple Inn where nobody knows that he’s sick. One year later in summer 1975, his younger sister, Maggie, who is still reeling from his loss also takes a job at the Red Maple Inn where she begins to heal while connecting with the people whose lives Chip touched over the course of his final summer.
Narrated from the point of view of both Chip and Maggie, this is a moving story about sibling relationships, coming-of-age, grief, living life to the fullest and holding on to memories of loved ones. I particularly enjoyed the book’s strong sense of place – the author does a great job conveying the magic of the Poconos resorts of the ’70s. Some of the plot points are a bit predictable but it’s still a good read for anyone who enjoys a sentimental story (one that I needed quite a few kleenex to get through)!
22. The Chateau on Sunset by Natasha Lester
Setting: Hollywood, California
1957 – Aria Jones is a 13 year-old orphan sent from New York City after the death of her parents to live with her aunt Miss Delvina Rey at the famous Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood. Her aunt is a fading star who doesn’t leave her room but aspiring actresses Calliope and Flitter take the grieving Aria under their wing.
1964 – Aria’s 21st birthday is approaching and she has saved enough money from babysitting for guests that she will be free to leave Chateau Marmont and live on her own. All of her carefully laid plans are shattered, however, when reclusive rock star Theo Winchester buys the Marmont and hires Aria to tutor his daughter Adele.
This dual timeline historical fiction novel is a retelling of Jane Eyre set at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s with the mistreatment of women in Hollywood central to the plot. It was an enjoyable read – I loved the setting/time period of the novel and I appreciated the take on Jane Eyre but found the writing style a bit stiff.
23. The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
Setting: A seaside town in Massachussetts
Twenty-eight year-old Caroline Lash, daughter of a bestselling novelist, leaves her publishing job in New York City to accept an 18 month writer’s residency sponsored by a late author’s estate in a small coastal town in Massachusetts. She soon meets and falls in love with local Van Whittaker who comes with a close-knit lifelong friend group who are now in their 30s including his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, Bailey, who has been sleeping with him off and on since they were teens. Bailey’s announcement that she’s pregnant with Van’s baby results in Caroline being pushed aside and she reacts with hurt and fury causing a chain reaction that exposes secrets and upends everyone’s lives.
Set in the fictional small town of Greenhead, Massachusetts, The Shampoo Effect is inspired by John Updike’s novel Couples, a story of suburban scandal published in 1968 that was based on his friends in Ipswich, Massachusetts where the author grew up. Told from multiple points of view, it’s the story of a group of lifelong friends, growing up, the messy reality of marriage and becoming parents, small towns and secrets – it’s a fun and frothy beach read!
24. City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi
Setting: Kabul, Afghanistan
FROM THE PUBLISHER: In February 2020 the US began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly twenty years of occupation. A whole generation of Afghan women had been born during that time—women who had grown up in relative peace, gone to school, entered the professions, even served in the army and Parliament. The women of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban filled the streets again. They knew everything was about to change.
In the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Kabul, women are TV newscasters, shop owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, even soldiers. They include Marjan, who fought with the Afghan army, and will risk everything to keep her daughter Hawa safe. In her earlier days Marjan was called Rahima and had lived the life of a bacha posh—a girl raised as a boy until she came of age. Forced into an early marriage, Rahima took the name Marjan when she fled her warlord husband. She’s created a whole new life for herself, one she will not give up easily.
So has Soraya, who defiantly wore red lipstick as she led the army’s all-female combat force over the objections of her upper-class family. Soraya’s now a wanted woman whose brother may choose not to shelter her from the Taliban. What will become of her? Or Mina, a journalist and broadcaster whose beautiful face is known to everyone in Kabul—including the new regime?
Fight or flight? Or find a third way? One thing is for certain: none of these women will meekly accept her fate.
25. When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams
Setting: Fictional island in New England
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: The property is mired in debt she canʼt repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.
Thirteen summers ago, the teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career, Ben has returned to live quietly in the Peabodys’ caretaker lodge. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy’s father alive.
As Lucy reconstructs her father’s troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal from the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy’s long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.
26. Lost in the Summer of ’69 by Eliza Knight
Setting: Cross-country road trip
1969 – It’s Eleanor’s 69th birthday and she has recently learned that she is in the early stages of dementia. She had been a musician when she was young and longs for what she gave up to marry and raise a family so spontaneously leaves the suburbs of New York with her small dog to travel to California for a music festival without letting her daughter know.
Eleanor’s daughter, Leanne, is worried when she realizes her mother is missing and convinces her own teenage daughter, Nora, who has recently graduated high school and is set to be one of the first female undergrads at Yale to go on a road trip with her to find Eleanor. Over the course of the summer, the two women drive across the country in their Lincoln Continental always two steps behind Eleanor as she travels from festival to festival until finally making their way back to New York for Woodstock mid-August.
Lost in the Summer of ’69 is historical fiction about three generations of women, an unforgettable summer of music and an epic cross-country road trip. It’s a sweet story about mother/daughter/grandmother relationships, second chances and following dreams set during a fascinating time period.
I enjoyed reading about the music festival scene in 1969 culminating with the historic Woodstock festival and Eleanor’s diagnosis of dementia gives the plot a sense of poignancy. I’m a stickler for details, however, particularly when it comes to historical facts and there were lines in the book that bothered me. I read an ARC though so hopefully they were corrected in the final version as the anachronisms took me completely out of the story.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
27. The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders
Setting: Tennessee
FROM THE PUBLISHER: At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling through adulthood. An underpaid gig worker in Washington, DC, she’s grieving the end of a serious relationship and the recent loss of her father. When Aubrey learns she has inherited his stake in a sizable Tennessee farm she sees an opportunity to get out of the city―and to erase a mounting pile of debt.
Watching her arrival with great interest are four ghosts―Aubrey’s ancestors, who’ve staked their own claims to the farm and who never hesitate to pass judgment on the mistakes made by the living, whether romantic, financial, or sartorial. As Aubrey reconnects with her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by Thomas, Aubrey’s great-grandfather and one of the first Black landowners in his community. Though Thomas hopes to give his children a homestead on which they could flourish, the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it turns the Lambs against one another, culminating in a catastrophic tragedy that splinters the family and echoes through the decades.
Now, as the clock ticks on a potential sale of the farm, the ghosts fear expulsion from the home they’ve made, and Aubrey must weigh the hopes and burdens of her forebears with the very real needs of her future.
28. Tenderness by Rowan Beaird
Setting: Remote island off the coast of Virginia
FROM THE PUBLISHER: On a remote island off the coast of Virginia, family and friends gather to celebrate the wedding of Shay O’Connor and Andrew Pruitt. From the moment the guests arrive, all they can whisper about is the bride, who recently left the headline-making cult Synanon. Why would someone like Shay, an Ivy League graduate with a wealthy, doting fiancée, join Synanon? And has she really escaped their grasp?
Told from the interwoven perspectives of Shay’s brother William, her longtime friend Joel, and Shay herself, Tenderness is a slow-burn mystery that excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets. As the wedding day approaches, Joel and William pull at the loose threads of Shay’s story, and it becomes clear there is an even greater threat on the island than the secrets each character is keeping from one another.
29. A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee
Setting: An American suburb
Publication Date: August 11, 2026
FROM THE PUBLISHER: A spellbinding exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants, A Tender Age joins the rich tradition of the American bildungsroman. The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caufield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.
Devastating in its emotional precision, A Tender Age captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away—then thinking about it for the rest of his life.
30. The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay
Setting: North Carolina
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Free-spirited travel influencer Hannah Spencer has spent five years touring the country in her vintage van, alone save for her hulking Great Dane, Dude. Until an unexpected inheritance from her pops has Hannah thinking about putting down roots in Cape Split, North Carolina, where she’s the new owner of a worse-for-wear seaside beach house. Or, rather, fifty percent of one. Turns out Simon O’Malley inherited the other half from his gramps.
As Simon and Hannah spend the summer tag-teaming repairs on the crumbling cottage, they discover it was once home to a timeless love story. As their own relationship shifts from enemies to friends to lovers, they begin to wonder if the house’s romantic past might be a good omen for their future together. But there’s one problem—Simon is set on selling the property at the end of the summer.
For Hannah, the Split isn’t like anyplace she’s ever been, and Simon isn’t like any man she’s ever known—she doesn’t want to let this new life go. She just needs Simon to see their budding relationship and this newfound community in the same way, or their first summer share might also be their last.
31. The Half Life by Rachel Beanland
Setting: Italy
FROM THE PUBLISHER: When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O’Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn’t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen’s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.
In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from.
Still, it doesn’t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island—not to mention all of Italy—doesn’t go communist in the next election.
When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the U.S. Navy. Soon, Eileen’s marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets—and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she’s been handed.
32. The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao Thai
Setting: Wisconsin, France, Vietnam
Publication Date: August 4, 2026
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Aside from the fact they are sisters, Vivi and Calla Nguyễn have little in common.
Vivi, the eldest, lives an orderly and predictable life. She works as an art conservator at a museum in Chicago, carefully preserving pieces of the past, all the while refusing to examine her own dark history.
Calla leads a much bolder, if occasionally reckless, existence. She’s an accomplished artist with a flair for the dramatic, charming and intriguing everyone she meets. She’s also a recovering addict, constantly causing Vivi to worry.
Months after the two fall out in the wake of their father’s death, Calla appears on the steps of the museum with a sketch and a letter she found in their father’s belongings. The sketch is an exact copy of Blue Mirror, a striking painting by a Vietnamese painter named K.P. Lý. In the letter, Lý writes about a mysterious lost work of art. Calla is convinced it is meant for their family, and that it was their father’s deathbed wish for her and Vivi to find it together. Intrigued yet reluctant to follow her capricious sister, Vivi must decide whether she’s willing to face or shut the door to the past.
From the ghostly Wisconsin woods to a glittering estate in the French countryside to a sprawling ancestral home teetering on the edge of a ravine in Việt Nam, The Seekers of Deer Creek is a story of sisters, art, and the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures across time and generations, always present even when buried.
33. The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh
Setting: Thailand, England
2010 – Carrie Cole, a young surgical intern in London, meets and falls in love with Johan in a whirlwind romance and impulsively agrees to marry him on a beach in Thailand. Their wedding celebration stretches into the evening until armed men storm the beach, arrest Johan for unknown crimes and take him away.
2022 – Twelve years later, Carrie is re-married and lives in the English countryside with her husband, Robin, and their 6 year-old twins. When she discovers through a random post online that Johan had escaped Thailand years earlier and has been living in Stockholm, Carrie becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about what happened on that beach even if it puts her marriage and family in jeopardy.
Don’t pick up this dual timeline novel expecting a thriller or you will likely end up disappointed. It’s more slow burn literary suspense with a love story at its centre. It definitely kept me turning the pages as I had to find out what had happened in Thailand and there were a couple of surprises in the plot that I enjoyed. Overall an entertaining beach read!
34. Eliza Sunshine by Michelle Good
Setting: Canada
Publication Date: August 18, 2026
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Sometimes I feel that I wasn’t born at all, rather sculpted and formed by the storms of my grandmother’s life.
When Eliza comes home from her first year at residential school, she is barely recognizable to her Nôhkom, Swan. Once bright-eyed and curious, Eliza is now stick-thin and silent, with roughly shorn hair and dull, listless eyes. Gathering bag in hand, Swan gently leads Eliza on long walks through untouched prairie grasses, harvesting medicines, certain that the power of the land will heal her. And as they walk, she shares stories of her own suffering when her traditional ways of being and living collided with the greed and violence of encroaching settlers. For Eliza, Swan’s journey offers a master class on how to face unspeakable adversity and remain true to herself.
Decades later, Eliza and her daughter are at a crossroads. When Ella comes home from her first year at university wearing bell bottoms, braids and a beaded headband, Eliza is horrified. Eliza fought her whole life to be free of the oppression that comes with being Cree and she can’t fathom why her daughter would choose to proclaim her heritage so proudly, disregarding the consequences. With a steaming mug of tea in hand, Eliza follows in her grandmother’s footsteps, sharing with Ella the story of the adversities she faced in her own relentless pursuit of freedom.
But Ella’s idea of freedom isn’t the same as Eliza’s. And when tragedy strikes, Ella must decide how to build her life in the aftermath, navigating how best to keep the stories of her family alive when the world around her seems to want them buried along with the legions of the missing and the dead.
35. The Windsor Affair by Melanie Benjamin
Setting: England
Spanning decades, this historical novel about England’s royal family begins at the glittering society parties of the 1930s when the married and previously-divorced Wallis Simpson meets the debonair Prince of Wales (David to family and close friends) and carries on a scandalous affair much to the disapproval of David’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who refers to Wallis only as “that woman”.
The story continues through the abdication crisis in 1936 when David (now King Edward VIII) gives up the crown to be with divorcée Wallis and Bertie “the spare” ascends to the throne. David and Wallis (now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) are exiled and Bertie leads the country through World War II with Elizabeth as Queen becoming a symbol of courage beloved by the English people. Over the following decades, their eldest daughter becomes Queen Elizabeth II but time doesn’t heal the relationship between Bowes-Lyon and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as she believes the stress of becoming king led to her husband’s early death and blames Wallis Simpson.
This historical fiction novel tells the story of Edward VIII’s abdication and the decades-long rivalry between Wallis Simpson and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the mother of Queen Elizabeth) from the perspective of these two women who despised each other – an English Queen and an American social climber. It’s a gossipy account of the scandal that nearly toppled the monarchy and its aftermath which suggests that the relationship between the former king and Wallis Simpson wasn’t the great love story that it was portrayed to be.
I learned a bit of history (I wasn’t aware that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had connections to Hitler and the Nazi party, for example) but this was just an okay read for me as it didn’t really draw me in. That seems to be a me problem though as reviews are overall quite good.
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