The Summer Stack
The books making it into my bag this summer, subject to mood swings and impulse purchases.
Hi Book Lovers,
Summer reading has its own energy. Something about the season gives you permission to read without guilt, more of it, faster, greedier. Just you and your book for however many hours you can carve out before real life interrupts.
This list started as a notes app situation that was frankly alarming, full of titles I’d been collecting since January, recommendations I was terrified of losing, release dates I’d starred and immediately forgotten about. What you’re looking at is the organized version of that mess, sorted by genre so you can go straight to whatever you’re in the mood for. Romance when you want your heart full. Thrillers when you want it racing. Literary fiction when you want something that lingers long after you close it.
But mostly I share this because reading is better when we’re doing it together. The DMs, the replies, the “I just ugly cried through that one too” messages, that’s the whole point. So grab whatever sounds good and come find me when you finish.
Full disclosure: there are 36 books on this list and roughly three months of summer, so I didn't wait for June to get started. The ones I've already finished are marked with a review link.
Light beach reads with a summery setting
Our Perfect Storm — Carley Fortune’s newest follows Frankie and George, childhood best friends who have been clashing and making up for as long as they can remember — until they can’t anymore. Then Frankie’s fiancé dumps her the morning of the wedding, and George whisks her off on her honeymoon to Tofino instead.
friends to lovers + jilted bride + forced proximity + slow burn + childhood friends + stunning setting
Dolly All the Time — An ultra-competent single mom agrees to help rehab the image of the millionaire next door after his very public breakup. Sunset boat rides and high-society galas ensue, and if you know Monaghan, you know you are going to love Dolly!
fake dating + single mom FMC + mature main characters + small town + coastal setting + slow burn
The Shippers — A woman leaves her fiancé at the altar, realizes she needs closure on her childhood crush, and ropes her best friend Cooper into being her wingman on her sister’s cruise ship wedding. You can see where this is going.
friends to lovers + destination wedding + cruise ship setting + oblivious FMC + childhood crush
Summer State of Mind — Kristy Woodson Harvey with a small-town romance about a burned-out NICU nurse who flees to Cape Carolina and ends up at the center of an abandoned baby storyline alongside a brooding baseball coach with his own baggage.
small town romance + forced proximity + found family + cozy + coastal setting
Romance reads that’ll make your heart do something embarrassing
Fever Dream — Elsie Silver launches a new Western romance series with a bull rider who signs up for a reality dating show to save his family’s farm, only to fall for the one woman on set who is entirely off-limits. Rivals-to-lovers with cowboy energy and Elsie Silver’s trademark slow burn. Say less.
rivals to lovers + forbidden romance + Western setting + reality TV + slow burn + cowboy MMC
The Missed Connection Out June 9, 2026 — Tia Williams (Seven Days in June) is back with a fun premise: a woman meets her maybe-soulmate on an international flight, forgets to get his name, and hires a private investigator from her past to track him down. A love triangle promptly makes everything more complicated.
missed connection + love triangle + private investigator + insta-connection
Before I Let Go — This is from my own backlist. Kennedy Ryan writing divorced co-parents who run a restaurant together and keep falling back into each other’s orbit. Equal parts scorching and emotionally gutting. I’m also told there is a lemon pound cake I must bake.
second chance romance + divorce + co-parenting + emotional
How to Write a Love Story — Catherine Walsh delivers an enemies-to-lovers slow burn about two rival authors forced to co-write a romance novel together at a remote Irish writing retreat in the summer heat.
enemies to lovers + forced proximity + Irish setting + writers + slow burn + sticky hot summer
When reality bends just enough
The Someday Garden Out June 16, 2026 — Ashley Poston (The Seven Year Slip) delivers exactly the kind of premise that makes my heart feel things. A new head gardener at a coastal Maine estate discovers a secret garden — and a mysterious man trapped inside it. If you grew up reading The Secret Garden and have been waiting for someone to write a romance set inside it, your time has come.
magical realism + secret garden setting + coastal Maine + enemies to lovers + enchanted setting
Romantic Hero Out June 16, 2026 — Kirsty Greenwood’s (The Love of My Afterlife) second book is almost here! A heartbroken romance novelist performs a manifestation ceremony with her eccentric neighbor and wakes up to find the villain from her unfinished manuscript — a rugged, shirtless cowboy named River Oakley — very real and very confused on her sofa. They strike a deal. It goes predictably sideways in the most delightful way.
magical realism + meta romance + fictional character comes to life + enemies to lovers + cowboy MMC
Once & Again — Rebecca Serle doing what Rebecca Serle does best: a woman, a love story, and just enough magic to make it ache. In the Novak family, every woman gets one chance to turn back time. Lauren is starting to wonder if now is hers — especially with her first love back in the picture. Billed as The Time Traveler’s Wife meets The Lake House, which is a comp I find very threatening.
magical realism + second chance romance + time travel + dual timeline + first love
Tropesick Out June 16, 2026 — Two childhood neighbors reunite to ghostwrite a romance novel at a reclusive author’s Hamptons estate, only to discover that every trope they write into their fictional love story starts mysteriously playing out in their real lives. Grumpy/sunshine, forced proximity, only one bed — it’s all there, and it’s all intentional.
meta romance + second chance + forced proximity + only one bed + slow burn + Hamptons setting
Historical fiction and sweeping literary novels
Lake Effect — Two neighboring families in 1977 Rochester, New York are forever altered when their parents blow up both marriages and run off together. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (The Nest) then follows the wreckage across two decades as the children try to figure out what they’re supposed to do with the fallout. “This is basically Anne Tyler with better sex,” per one review, which tells you everything.
family drama + multigenerational + dual timeline + 1970s setting + literary fiction + infidelity
Almost Life — Two women meet on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris in 1978 — Laure, a haughty French PhD student, and Erica, an 18-year-old English tourist on her first trip abroad. What begins as a summer romance becomes a relationship that quietly defines every decision both women make for the rest of their lives. Already being called the sapphic One Day, which sounds perfect for the summer.
sapphic romance + multigenerational + dual timeline + Paris setting + literary fiction + missed chances
Land — Maggie O’Farrell, who wrote Hamnet, returns with a historical novel set in Ireland in the years surrounding the Great Hunger. That’s essentially all the information I need, and if you’ve read her before, it’s all you need too.
historical fiction + Ireland setting + literary fiction + 19th century + survival
The Amalfi Curse — Sarah Penner (The Lost Apothecary) with dual timelines, a nautical archaeologist hunting sunken treasure off the Amalfi Coast, and a sea witch from the 1820s whose curse is very much still in play. This one has been on my list for a while and I am finally making it happen this summer.
historical fiction + magical realism + dual timeline + Italian setting + witches + treasure hunt
Contemporary fiction with feels and dual timelines
June Baby — I am currently reading and loving this one. From Jenna Bush Hager's imprint that brought us Conform and Into the Blue — two for two so far, and this one is shaping up to be no different. A woman named Ruth has spent every summer since she was 17 on Block Island, ever since her mother died and her father sent her to stay with a photographer named Diana. Now Diana is gone too, and a mysterious box she left behind is starting to raise questions Ruth isn't sure she's ready to answer. Heavy, atmospheric, and lyrical.
coming of age + grief + dual timeline + coastal setting + found family + secrets + slow burn romance
Whistler — A 53-year-old woman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art realizes the white-haired man who’s been following her through the galleries is Eddie, her former stepfather, absent from her life since she was nine. Ann Patchett then does what Ann Patchett always does: quietly excavates an entire family’s worth of love, loss, and complicated grace in under 300 pages.
literary fiction + family drama + reunion + memory + dual timeline + New York setting
Good Joy, Bad Joy — For 89 years, Joy Bridport has played by every rule there is. Then her best friend Hazel — the adventurous one, the bold one — is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Joy decides she has some catching up to do. Told across a lifetime of memories, this one is warm and funny and the kind of sad that sneaks up on you.
female friendship + dual timeline + older protagonist + late life reinvention + grief + small town setting
28 Summers — One weekend a year, every year, no matter what. Elin Hilderbrand’s multigenerational love story follows two people who meet on Nantucket and keep finding their way back to each other for 28 Labor Day weekends across the span of their lives. Devastating in the best possible way, and a TV adaptation is reportedly in the works. This one has been sitting on my shelf long enough to be embarrassing and I am making a public commitment right now to finally read it this summer.
forbidden romance + affair + Nantucket setting + multigenerational + dual timeline
Women, friendship, identity and the bonds that define us
Crash Into Me Out July 7, 2026 — Robinne Lee (The Idea of You) is back, and this one is more literary fiction than romance (I’m told). A photographer in a complicated marriage in LA literally crashes into a woman who was a model from her past, and the collision sets off a reckoning about identity, desire, race, and who exactly Cecilia has been performing for all these years. I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time.
literary fiction + identity + queer themes + Los Angeles setting + marriage + self-discovery
Girl’s Girl Three teenage best friends in suburban Ohio, one summer, and the invisible currents of jealousy, desire, and loyalty that run underneath every female friendship.
coming of age + female friendship + queer themes + Midwest setting + literary fiction + summer
Summer of Songbirds — Four women who met at summer camp as kids band together to save it from closing decades later. Kristy Woodson Harvey is basically the patron saint of warm, Southern women’s fiction, and this one has second chances and female friendship written all over it.
women’s fiction + female friendship + summer camp setting + second chance romance + Southern setting
Road Trip — Two estranged sisters with nothing in common except a dead mother and a possibly priceless inherited painting pile into a car and drive to Ireland to find out which it is. Mary Kay Andrews doing what she does best: warm, funny, a little messy, and surprisingly moving by the end.
sisters + road trip + Ireland setting + family secrets + women’s fiction + light mystery
Messy rich people, social chaos, and someone about to blow it all up
The Shampoo Effect Out June 30, 2026 — Jenny Jackson (Pineapple Street) takes her signature rich-people-behaving-badly energy to a small coastal Massachusetts town, where an outsider falls for a local man whose entire friend group — including his ex, who has just announced a pregnancy — is about to have a lot of feelings about it. Dazzlingly fun and sharper than it looks.
women’s fiction + female friendship + coastal setting + social dynamics + pregnancy plot + messy love triangle
Big Little Truths Out August 25, 2026 — The kids are teenagers now. A strange man is lurking around the school. A severed finger arrives in the principal’s mailbox. Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie are back — messier, older, and somehow still in the middle of something they didn’t ask for. The long-awaited Big Little Lies sequel and the basis for Season 3 of the HBO series.
domestic suspense + female friendship + sequel + Australian setting + multigenerational + community drama
Yesteryear — A tradwife influencer who promotes Christian values and farm life on social media wakes up one day in the actual 19th century, without her phone, her followers, or her husband. GMA Book Club pick, Anne Hathaway attached to the film, and one of the buzziest books this year. Be warned: it is quite disturbing and divisive.
thriller + satire + time travel + tradwife FMC + dark humor + social commentary
The Lake Club Out June 16, 2026 — Two women at a wealthy lakeside country club become separately obsessed with the same male nanny, which sets off a chain reaction that drags a long-buried scandal up to the surface. Described as soapy and unputdownable, which is truly everything I want from a summer read.
contemporary fiction + country club setting + secrets + wealthy setting + dual POV + debut
Page-turning thrillers and dark fiction
Summer’s Never Over Out June 9, 2026 — A woman returns to her family’s summer camp years after a counselor’s death that everyone agreed was an accident. She’s starting to think everyone was wrong. Told across dual timelines, this adult debut has been compared to We Were Liars and The God of the Woods, which were both standout reads for me.
thriller + summer camp setting + dual timeline + dark secrets + adult debut
It Could Have Been Her Out June 23, 2026 — Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True) at her darkest yet. A woman returns a stray dog to its registered address and ends up at a run-down London house with a very bad feeling she can’t shake, a missing teenager, and a man who seems to know more than he’s saying.
psychological thriller + domestic suspense + missing persons + London setting + dark secrets
Housewife Out June 30, 2026 — Jodie’s dream was to be a housewife and she got exactly that when she married a well-to-do psychologist. Now she thinks he killed his first wife, and she’s going to clean every inch of that house until she finds proof. Natalie Barelli writes the kind of thriller that makes you suspicious of everyone in your own life, which I respect enormously.
psychological thriller + domestic suspense + unreliable narrator + dark marriage + twisty
What Kind of Paradise — A girl raised off the grid in a Montana cabin by her survivalist father discovers, via one of the internet’s first chat rooms, that the world her father described and the world that actually exists are very different things. Set against the backdrop of the 1990s tech boom, this one sounds genuinely unnerving.
coming of age + thriller + 1990s setting + unreliable parent + dual timeline
The ones I’ll get to if the TBR gods are willing
The Lowe Job Out June 16, 2026 — When Lili Lowe gets caught having an affair with her married politician boss, she turns to her mother for help. Her mother, a former talent agent, does not offer gentle words of consolation — she turns the scandal into a media empire. Four sisters, one exploding family, and a very sharp look at fame, ambition, and what happens when women decide to stop apologizing for taking up space. Comped to Margo’s Got Money Troubles and described as the Kardashians if they were British.
women’s fiction + scandal + family drama + social commentary + debut
One Perfect Couple — five couples on a tropical reality dating show — and slowly, methodically makes it terrifying. When a storm cuts off the island and people start disappearing, the game gets very real very fast.
thriller + survival + reality TV setting + island setting + locked room mystery
Hotel Nantucket — A haunted Gilded Age hotel, a billionaire owner determined to restore its former glory, a ghost with a hundred-year-old grudge, and an Instagram tastemaker who could make or break the whole thing. Elin Hilderbrand at her most fun.
women’s fiction + ghost + Nantucket setting + ensemble cast + secrets + second chance romance
The Midnight Train — Matt Haig (The Midnight Library) returns with a companion novel about an 81-year-old bookshop owner who boards a magical train on the brink of death. The train takes him back to the most important moments of his life — including his honeymoon in Venice — but he can watch without changing a thing. I’m already not okay about this one.
magical realism + literary fiction + grief + love story + time travel + older protagonist
Welcome Summer and Summer Reading!
Keep the pages turning,
