Whether your summer plans involve a beach chair, a hammock, or just avoiding your inbox, you’ll want the right book by your side. We put together the best summer reads of 2025 that’ll make you forget what scrolling is, and discovering how joyful flipping a page is. Choose from a mix of genres to match whatever mood the season throws at you: charming romances, gripping thrillers, historical fiction, laugh-out-loud comedies, and memoirs that hit deep.
1. One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
Bestselling author Carley Fortune returns to the lake with One Golden Summer, a story soaked in memory and longing. When Alice, a photographer, returns to Barry’s Bay, the idyllic place where she once spent a life-shaping summer, she’s not prepared to see Charlie Florek again. Once just a boy who was in a photo she took years ago, now a very real and handsome man. As they dive back into the carefree summer life, Alice feels herself beginning to find what she’s been searching for. This tender, sunlit romance explores whether one magical summer can truly last a lifetime. If you’re craving emotional depth wrapped in golden-hour nostalgia, this one’s a must.
2. Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
Alice Feeney spins another taut, masterfully twisted thriller that asks: How well do you know the person you married? One year after his wife vanishes, author Grady Green retreats to a remote Scottish island—only to see a woman who looks exactly like her. What follows is a dark, spiraling descent into obsession, memory, and the lies we live with. Gripping, atmospheric, and impossible to put down, Beautiful Ugly is a razor-sharp meditation on love, betrayal, and the haunting nature of truth.
3. Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
Based on the extraordinary true story of Jessie Redmon Fauset, Harlem Rhapsody is a richly imagined historical novel about the woman who helped launch the Harlem Renaissance, Jessie Redmon Fauset. She was the editor, tastemaker, and passionate woman behind some of America’s greatest Black voices. From her complex affair with W.E.B. Du Bois to her mentorship of young literary legends like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, Jessie’s story pulses with ambition, brilliance, and heartbreak. Harlem Rhapsody isn’t just historical fiction—it’s a richly woven tribute to a woman whose legacy shaped a cultural movement and deserves to be remembered.
4. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
Tense, intimate, and devastating in its emotional openness, Broken Country digs deep into the fractures beneath a seemingly quiet life. When a single act of violence brings Gabriel Wolfe back into Beth’s world, the past comes roaring to the surface—and so do secrets that could unravel everything. Moving between timelines with precision and urgency, Clare Leslie Hall delivers a story steeped in longing, guilt, and what-ifs. This novel doesn’t just ask what might have been, it forces us to confront what still is.
5. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
With Sunrise On The Reaping, Suzanne Collins brings us the fifth book in The Hunger Games series. It’s the story of Haymitch Abernathy, the mentor we thought we knew. In this gripping new installment of The Hunger Games series, we go back to the 50th Games, and a Capitol thirstier for blood than ever. When Haymitch is chosen to represent his District, he’s ripped from the girl he loves and thrown into a brutal arena. But the Games are rigged. Still, something inside Haymitch won’t surrender because even when the world wants you broken, you can still choose to fight.
6. Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Set against the soaring ambition of NASA’s 1980s shuttle program, Atmosphere is a powerful story about women who dared to reach beyond Earth, and the lives they changed along the way. Joan Goodwin, a brilliant physicist, is one of the few chosen for a pioneering astronaut class. As she trains for space, she forges unexpected bonds and a love she never planned for. But when a mission takes a tragic turn, Joan is forced to reckon with reality on earth in all its forms. Taylor Jenkins Reid delivers her signature blend of emotional weight and irresistible storytelling that has made her a much-loved author.
7. Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
Hilarious, chaotic, and unexpectedly moving, Slags is a no-filter road trip through the Scottish Highlands with too much wine, bad weather, and sisterhood that cuts deep. Sarah, forty-something and flailing, drags her younger sister on a wild holiday meant to heal old wounds. Instead, it dredges up their shared past, unresolved grief, and some highly questionable men. Emma Jane Unsworth nails the messiness of female relationships with wit and bite, delivering characters and stories that’ll make you laugh out loud.
8. We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Han Kang deservedly won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024. In We Do Not Part, she brings us a haunting, powerful, and poetic novel that is as much an experience as it is a story. In the snow-covered stillness of Jeju Island, Kyungha rushes to help her injured friend, Inseon. When she arrives, she finds a buried truth waiting beneath the silence. What follows is a meditation on memory, violence, and the scars we carry through generations. This novel invites you into a space where history and emotion blur, where pain is inherited but healing—though fragile—is still possible.
9. When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
In When the Going Was Good, legendary editor Graydon Carter chronicles how he transformed Vanity Fair into the most culturally influential magazine in America. When Carter took the helm in 1992, fresh off skewering the elite at Spy magazine, many doubted he could lead a publication that celebrated them. Instead, he reinvented Vanity Fair with a singular blend of investigative grit, literary brilliance, and unapologetic glamour. From landmark Hollywood covers to hard-hitting journalism and the now-iconic Oscar party, Carter made the magazine not just relevant, but essential. This candid memoir charts his rise from Canadian outsider to gatekeeper of American taste, offering a vivid, behind-the-scenes portrait of the final golden age of print media, when magazines shaped the culture instead of chasing it.
10. My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
What is summer without a Marian Keyes novel? Funny, fierce, and full of heart, My Favourite Mistake brings another irresistible heroine in Anna. She’s a New York PR powerhouse who’s had enough of high-stakes beauty campaigns and curated happiness. When a personal crisis sends her packing to small-town Ireland, she’s thrown into chaos: a coastal retreat no one wants, a town ready for battle, and a former flame who still knows how to push her buttons. But Anna didn’t survive the Manhattan beauty industry by being soft. With grit, wit, and maybe a little grace, she’s about to discover what really matters, and which mistakes are worth repeating.
Grow Your Summer Books Reading List
Want more books to read this summer? We have more recommendations for you to check out in this post.
