My favourite season is upon us. Woo!
I’m the biggest summer girlie (probably because I was born in June), and there’s nothing I love more than hot, balmy days, swimming in the sea, and reading smut on the beach.
Yes, the books I’m reading this summer have contemporary romance written all over them. I’m an absolute sucker for yearning, sexual tension, and the whole “will they won’t they” arc.
These are the beach reads that are currently dominating my Kindle and helping me scroll less.
P.S. If you’re new here, hey! I’m Thalia. I help burnt-out girlies like you build a life that’s aligned, magnetic, and unapologetically yours. Every week(ish) I share content on burnout recovery, career growth, and navigating life in your thirties. Subscribe here so you never miss a debrief.
What are the best books to read in summer?
If you’ve been reading my blog for at least a day you’ll know that I’m doom scroller.
It’s a habit that I’m slowly starting to break but I’m not going to lie, it’s hard.
And right now my kryptonite is wedding dresses. I guess Meta caught wind of the fact that I’m currently on the hunt for cute AF wedding dress and now all they keep showing me is wedding content which is pretty draining to be honest and stirs up a lot of comparison.
So this summer I’m trying to do things differently.
Every time I get the urge to pick up to scroll on Instagram, I’m reaching for my Kindle instead and reading a juicy chapter or two.
Hence, why I’ve been able to get through more books than usual.
I’m usually a one-book-per-week kinda gal, but right now I’m reading at least two a week. And because they all mainly follow a friends to lovers or enemies to lovers trope (aka smut fiction), I find it super easy to get through them.
My the ones I can’t get enough of right now are:
- Into The Blue by Emma Brodie
- Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
- This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
- Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
- One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
- 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
- The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand
- Beach Read by Emily Henry
- People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry
- These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
P.S. I encourage you to save this post (like now!!) so you can come back to it whenever you need to.
Into The Blue by Emma Brodie
TLDR: AJ and Noah meet as teenagers while working in a small-town video rental store. They bond over acting and improv, share a kiss, but then Noah leaves town without a word.
Seven years later, they’re cast in the same TV show together and forced to deal with their love for each other. It’s one of those slow burn, right person wrong time stories with a decade of unresolved feelings sitting underneath every single scene.
Why I love this book: Unlike most of the other books on this list, Into The Blue has depth to it.
It’s not just a straightforward love story.
It spans decades and follows AJ and Noah through completely different phases of their lives, which adds way more substance than your typical summer romance.
I also found the scenes on improv super fascinating which kept me hooked, and there’s a secret at the centre of it that I did not see coming. I had to put the book down for a second when it all came out.
Ah, this book is still giving me shivers just thinking about it.
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
TLDR: Frankie gets dumped the morning of her wedding, and her childhood best friend, George suggests the most chaotic solution: she should go on the honeymoon anyway, with just him instead.
No guesses to what happens next because it’s pretty much obvious, but the friends-to-lovers tension will still keep you up at night.
Why I love this book: I dare you to name a better combo than a vacation and a friends-to-lovers trope?! I’ll wait.
What Carley Fortune does so well is make the friendship between George and Frankie feel completely real before any romantic feelings come into it, so by the time things shift you’re already so invested in both of them that you almost can’t handle it. The dreamy setting of Tofino helps too, there’s something about a windswept coastal town that makes the tension feel even more intense.
I’d wouldn’t say it’s the best Carley Fortune book, but it’s still kept me gripped, because If you haven’t guess by now, I’m a huge sucker for a love story.
This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
TLDR: Lucy goes to Prince Edward Island every summer to visit her best friend Bridget, eat oysters, and try (and fail) to stay out of Felix’s bed. The problem being that Felix is Bridget’s brother, which makes the whole thing very complicated and very forbidden.
Bridget then goes MIA a week before her wedding and Lucy has to fly out to help, which means being around Felix again, except this time something feels different.
Why I love this book: Are you starting to notice a theme? I love a Carley Fortune book, but This Summer Will Be Different remains my favourite one. And yes, I’ve read it twice in case you’re not entirely convinced.
There’s something about the PEI setting that just gets me every time — the oysters, the red cliffs, the vinho verde. It sounds dreamy AF that reading it almost feels like actually being there.
But the thing I love most about this book is probably Felix.
He’s obviously been written by a women, so of course he’s going to be perfect in every way, but the slow burn between him and Lucy across multiple summers, knowing they keep trying to stay away from each other and completely failing every time, is exactly the kind of thing I’m here for.
I also really resonated with the subplot of a 30-year-old Lucy “finding herself” which is probably why I keep coming back to this book.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
TLDR: Percy and Sam spend every summer at the lake as teenagers, fall for each other, and then something goes very horribly wrong. Years later, Percy is back at the lake and asking for forgiveness.
Why I love this book: I actually read this one last summer, but after watching the horrendous TV adaptation on Amazon Prime I needed to go back to the book and remind myself why I fell in love with Percy and Sam.
The show didn’t do it justice at all, so if you watched it and weren’t convinced, please read the book before you write it off completely.
The nostalgia of it is what gets me most. Those teenage summers at the lake are written so vividly that you feel genuinely wistful for a place and a time that isn’t even yours. Percy and Sam’s dynamic is sweet without being over the top, and the reason things fell apart between them feels real rather than just dramatic for drama’s sake.
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
TLDR: The sequel to Every Summer After, centres on Alice who heads back to the (famous) lakeside town (Barry’s Bay) she visited as a teenager, this time to look after her grandmother.
Charlie Florek turns up in the same yellow boat she photographed years ago, now very much a grown adult, and is now, annoyingly, very attractive and very charming.
Why I love this book: There’s something so comforting about going back to a fictional world you’ve already spent time in, and that’s a big part of why I loved this one. Barry’s Bay already felt familiar, which made settling into Alice’s story really easy.
Charlie Florek is such a good character, and seeing him from Alice’s perspective rather than Percy’s gives the book a completely different energy.
It’s a bit slower than the others, which I know some people won’t love, but for me it was perfect.
Hopefully Season Two of Every Year After, (which will adapt this book) will stick more to the plot and be way better then the first.
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
TLDR: Two people fall for each other and agree to meet just once a year, every Labor Day weekend, for 28 years, no matter what else is going on in their lives. Marriages, kids, loss, all of it.
It sounds like it should be romantic and it is, but it’s also genuinely quite devastating by the end, in the way that only a really good love story can be.
Why I love this book: I loved the nostalgia of this one, it’s set throughout the 90s and early 00s which gives it this really warm, specific quality that made me ache for a more simple time.
The descriptions of Nantucket are stunning too. The way Mallory cooks, explores the island, and builds this quiet, intentional life for herself, I literally found myself envying her existence multiple times, which doesn’t happen often with a fictional character. #goals
The love story itself did frustrate me though, and I was screaming for them to just get their act together. But in saying that Mallory and Jake McCloud (the main protagonists) spend so little time together on the actual pages that it was hard to truly root for them.
The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand
TLDR: A bridesmaid turns up dead on a Nantucket beach the morning of her bestie’s wedding, and everyone invited has a reason to have done it. This is Hilderbrand at her finest — gorgeous setting, lots of drama, and characters you’re suspicious of the entire way through.
Why I love this book: I know this entire list is basically romance books, but is a summer TBR stack really complete without a whodunit? I don’t think so.
The thing that got me about this one is how much you’re actively trying to solve it while reading. Every single chapter someone new becomes suspect, and I’d literally be sitting there like, “okay, no, it was DEFINITELY her” and then two chapters later completely changing my mind.
I gave up trying to be smart about it in the end and just enjoyed the ride.
Also, side note, if you watched the Netflix show and thought it was fine, the book is so much better. There’s way more depth to the characters and the ending hits differently.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
TLDR: Two writers end up as neighbours for the summer. January writes romance, Augustus writes literary fiction, and they both hate each other’s genre. They bet each other they can write the other’s kind of book. It’s funny, it’s actually quite sad in places, and it’s the book that got everyone hooked on Emily Henry for a reason.
Why I love this book: The thing I love most about smut fiction is that the ending is 100% predictable and I literally don’t care. The drama and tension and the push and pull before two people finally get together is the entire point. Eeek, love it.
I haven’t read too much Emily Henry as I just assumer her books would be too cringey for me (I blame the titles), but Beach Read wasn’t the case at all. I did genuinely look forward to reading this one every night.
And don’t get put off by the title itself, I think Beach Read is such a random title and has nothing to do with the actual plot of the book. They barely spend any time on the beach, and neither of the characters are writing books that are beach worthy.
I would’ve called it Long Hot Summer, maybe. Lol.
People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry
TLDR: Alex and Poppy have been best friends for years with a tradition of taking summer trips together, but two summers ago something weird happened and they haven’t really spoken since.
The whole book flips between their past trips and the present, as Poppy tries to figure out if they can fix they’re friendship.
Why I love this book: People We Meet On Vacation was actually my introduction to Emily Henry, and I get why everyone was obsessed. Alex and Poppy have that specific dynamic where they take the mick out of each other constantly but you can also tell they’d drop everything for each other in a heartbeat.
It’s the kind of friendship you want IRL, tbh.
The dual timeline is what really got me hooked. You get all these snapshots of their annual summer trips over the years, and running underneath it is this mystery of what actually happened two summers ago that made them stop talking.
I was flying through it trying to figure out what went down. (Although in hindsight, it was pretty obvious.)
Also, be warned: this book will absolutely give you the travel itch. Every single trip they take sounds so dreamy AF that I came away with about six new places on my bucket list.
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
TLDR: A billionaire dies and his four grown children have to spend a week together on their private Rhode Island island completing tasks from his will before anyone can inherit anything.
It’s basically Succession meets Knives Out — messy siblings, a very cold mother, buried secrets, and a man named Jack Dean who shows up and is immediately very interesting.
Why I love this book: Okay, hear me out. These Summer Storms is divisive AF on Goodreads — some people love it, some people find the family drama too much. I’m firmly in the love it camp.
There’s something so juicy about watching a family fall apart in real time on a private island with literally nowhere to escape to. Every meal is loaded, every conversation has a subtext, and I was completely gripped the entire way through.
The four siblings are all so different in how they react to their dad’s death, and don’t even get me started on the mother. She’s straight up awful and I lived for every one of her scenes.
Jack Dean has serious Beth Dutton energy too, which if you know, you know. If you want your summer romance messy, rich, and slightly unhinged, this book is the one.
Final thoughts
These books might not exactly be burnout recovery material, but they still do the job.
They transport me to another world, encourage me to use my imagination, and fill up my cup with goodness. And if I’m being completely honest, that’s more than any self-help book has done for me lately.
Reading fiction is, and always will be, my go-to way to switch off, so if you’re feeling like you’re nearing burnout or just need a break from Insta, maybe a summer of romance and drama is exactly what you need.
And just to recap, the books I’m reading this summer to scroll less are:
- Into The Blue by Emma Brodie
- Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
- This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
- Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
- One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
- 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
- The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand
- Beach Read by Emily Henry
- People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry
- These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
I can’t wait to hear which book(s) you read this summer!
Until next week,
Thalia xx
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