Summer Reads 2025 from Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly

Get Real, Chloe Torres

Crystal Maldonado (Holiday House)

When high schooler Chloe obtains three tickets to see her favorite boy band in concert, she persuades former besties Sienna and Ramona to accompany her, hoping that the impromptu road trip from Massachusetts to Nevada—and the summer antics they might get up to along the way—can repair the broken friendship. A queer love triangle adds sizzling rom-com energy to Maldonado’s heartwarming and hilarious novel, which tackles potent themes of transition.

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Kill Creatures

Rory Power (Delacorte)

Breakneck pacing catapults readers into Power’s psychological thriller, in which a missing teen resurfaces, to the surprise of her murderer. A year after Nan kills her best friend Luce during a moonlit trip into Saltcedar Canyon, Luce is found alive, with no recollection of her death. As police investigate, a panicked Nan scrambles to obscure the facts in this unsettling and gleefully twisted drama told via Nan’s increasingly troubled—and troubling—narration.

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Salvación

Sandra Proudman (Wednesday)

By day, 17-year-old Lola assists her mother in healing ailing travelers. By night, she is the sword-wielding vigilante Salvación. Upon learning that a dangerous man possessing deadly magic is heading for her Coloma, Calif., home, Lola must thwart his plans to protect everything she loves. The 1848 setting, and an inventive magic system that draws on Central American history, support weighty themes in Proudman’s swashbuckling, Zorro-inspired historical fantasy helmed by a stubborn yet vulnerable heroine.

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Sanskari Sweetheart

Ananya Devarajan (HarperCollins)

Groundhog Day mechanics get a Bollywood spin in Devarajan’s lively rom-com. After dancer Raina sustains a head injury mid-performance and realizes she’s stuck in a time loop, she must relive the humiliating incident—and a devastating breakup—as she struggles to escape the cycle. Alongside exciting depictions of competitive dance, Raina and (ex-?)boyfriend Aditya’s sparkling chemistry propels this charming romp, which bursts with tension, banter, and romance.

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The Summer I Ate the Rich

Maika and Maritza Moulite (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Having been born a zombie who craves human flesh, 17-year-old Brielle struggles to manage her appetite alongside medical, financial, and familial challenges, which the Moulite sisters relay using fluid narration peppered with riveting Haitian folklore. Though an internship with Miami’s most powerful white family alleviates some of her burdens, things get messy when Brielle uses her supernatural abilities to balance the scales of class and racial inequity in this biting horror novel.

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The Tournament

Rebecca Barrow (McElderry)

In this stunning and propulsive dark academia thriller, three teenagers attending a Washington all-girls school must decide to what lengths they’ll go to win an intense survivalist competition. Barrow balances nuanced discussions of class differences and belonging with gruesome portrayals of hunting and wound care to deliver a harrowing tale about expectations and ambition. Everyday stress relating to school and family—as well as a complicated love triangle—ground the novel’s Shakespearean tragedy vibes.

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