Fiction 
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Summer Reads 2025 |
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2010
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2012
One of the best ways to kick off a relaxing weekend in the country is by reading a novel about a nightmarish weekend in the country. Ebbott’s tale of two New York families and their fraying friendship begins with minor injuries, physical and psychological, during their October getaway and builds to an explosive reckoning.
Rawle’s romp takes place on the set of a reality TV show gone wild, one that combines elements of dating shows like Love Island with the intense physical challenges of Survivor. The heroine, a contestant competing for men and other prizes, must choose between true love and ultimate victory. It’s a page-turner with plenty to talk about.
A novel by a writer known for challenging literary experiments might not sound like an obvious choice for a summer reading list, but the adventurous-minded would do well to have this slim volume tucked in their back pocket for a day of immersion in cutting-edge prose. Énard juxtaposes a war veteran’s solitary journey from a near-future battlefield with the story of a cruise ship sailing on 9/11 in this dual narrative, which culminates in a bracing meditation on history’s repetitions.
Dinan’s modern love story ranges from London to France as a British trans woman hopes the man she’s dating will turn out to be the one. Her path to happily ever after hits a snag, though, when she finds out her beau did some shady things during his gap year in Thailand. There are no easy answers in this lush and yearning novel.
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Three sisters retreat to their seaside childhood home in Japan, where the elder two hope to help the youngest weather a crisis. What makes this so alluring is the way in which Itami portrays the sisters’ indulgences of nostalgia, even as they deal with the truth behind their mother’s long-ago untimely death. There’s plenty of refreshing sunshine in this bittersweet tale.
Angst-ridden pop star Cleo Louvent’s narration is as irresistible as her singing voice in Ventura’s gripping novel. The action takes place on an exclusive island in the South Pacific, where Cleo has traveled to work on her next record. There, she reflects on her rise to stardom, and the reader gradually learns the shocking extent of her ruthlessness and the cost of her success.
Chilean bestseller Allende delves into her country’s 1891 civil war via the perspective of her title character, a young Irish Chilean woman. Now an intrepid reporter in San Francisco, Emilia travels to cover the conflict with her colleague, who soon becomes a love interest. The cinematic and propulsive novel is as good with romance as it is with the nitty-gritty of newspaper work, and it culminates with Emilia’s satisfying reconciliation with her roots.
The class war is on in Cauley’s blistering heist novel. It’s about three Black women relegated to retail jobs while drowning in student debt, who pool their talents to take down their draconian loan servicer. Cauley sharpens the narrative with harrowing speculative details that feel all too real, like the brutal “debt police” who come knocking on the door.
In an afterward to this elegant and wistful collection, Aciman describes the inspiration for the closing novella about a lovesick woman in Italy, telling of how it came to him while sunbathing and reading 17th-century French literature on a rooftop in Cambridge, Mass. Each of these transportive tales, whether they’re set on the Amalfi Coast or in a gloomy New York City courtroom during jury duty, introduces readers to startling new possibilities.
Teenager Jay secretly explores his love for an older boy who works on his family’s Malaysian farm during his summer break. Much more is happening in the backdrop of Jay’s hidden drama, as his parents’ marriage strains and his lover’s father tries to rejuvenate the failing tamarind grove. Aw’s sense of place is as vivid as his view into his characters’ inner turmoil.
Nothing beats Grace Kelly on the Riviera, as seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. But Clayton’s portrait of an aspiring Hitchcock blonde has intrigue to spare. Fledgling star Isabella Giori’s rise is cut short when she gets pregnant, after which she makes a fateful friendship with a blacklisted screenwriter while the McCarthy hearings rage on. Fans of Hollywood’s golden age will fall in love.
Shteyngart’s reliable prescience and pessimistic wit are on full display in this affecting drama of a slightly more unsettling world than ours, one where a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution would give a five-thirds vote to citizens whose roots go back to the colonial era. It’s told from the perspective of Vera, a 10-year-old girl with a delightful ear for language and a stirring determination to finally meet her Korean birth mother.
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