Summer Reads 2025

Escape the summer heat with a cool read.

Showing 1 - 15 of 15  There are a total of 18 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Arsenic and adobo"
Star rating for Arsenic and adobo
Series:
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from...

2. Burn

Book cover for "Burn"
Star rating for Burn
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Every year Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to northern Maine where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state has convulsed all summer with secession mania--a mania that had simultaneously spread across other states--Jess and Storey figure it's a fight reserved for legislators or, worse-case scenario, folks in the capitol. But after two weeks hunting moose off the grid, the men reach...
Book cover for "A forty year kiss"
Star rating for A forty year kiss
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing-he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But forty years is a long time. It's forty years of other relationships, forty years of building new lives, and forty years of long-held regrets, mistakes,...
Book cover for "Grace of the Empire State"
Star rating for Grace of the Empire State
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"After the death of their father, it's up to Grace O'Connell and her twin brother Patrick to support their family as the Great Depression takes its toll on New York City. When Grace is laid off from her dancing gig and Patrick is injured at work on the construction of the Empire State Building, desperation leaves them only one solution: Grace must disguise herself as Patrick and take his place on the half-built skyscraper"--
Book cover for "Greta & Valdin"
Star rating for Greta & Valdin
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"It's been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he's sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he's thrown back in his former lover's orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the...
Book cover for "Here beside the rising tide"
Star rating for Here beside the rising tide
Author:
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"When a romance author tries to escape chaos by taking her kids to her childhood beach home, her plans are upended by the return of a deceased childhood friend, newfound love, and--sea monsters?"--
Book cover for "The Hotel Nantucket"
Star rating for The Hotel Nantucket
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
After a tragic fire in 1922 that killed 19-year-old chambermaid Grace Hadley, The Hotel Nantucket descended from a gilded age gem to a mediocre budget-friendly lodge to an abandoned eyesore--until it's purchased and renovated top to bottom by London billionaire Xavier Darling. Xavier hires Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton as his general manager, and Lizbet, in turn, pulls together a charismatic if inexperienced staff who shares the vision of turning...
Book cover for "Last summer on State Street"
Star rating for Last summer on State Street
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer"-- "Summer, 1999. Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens lives with her mother and older teenaged brother in building 4950 of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. The high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority, and the neighborhood is beginning...
Book cover for "Lies and weddings"
Star rating for Lies and weddings
Author:
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus's scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister's wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable...
Book cover for "The paradise problem"
Star rating for The paradise problem
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam "West" Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she'd signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the...
Book cover for "Sandwich"
Star rating for Sandwich
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
"For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds : emotional, marital, and -- thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing -- septic too. This year's vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past -- except,...
Book cover for "Seven days in June"
Star rating for Seven days in June
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and...
Book cover for "Summer love"
Star rating for Summer love
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"When four strangers rent bargain-basement rooms in an old hotel near the beach, they embark on the summer of their lives. First there's Ariel Spencer, who has big dreams of becoming a writer and is looking for inspiration in Nantucket's high society. Her new friend Sheila Murphy is a good Catholic girl from Ohio whose desire for adventure is often shadowed by her apprehension. Then there's small-town Missourian Wyatt Smith-who's immediately taken...
Book cover for "Summer on the Bluffs"
Star rating for Summer on the Bluffs
Series:
Summer beach volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"Welcome to Oak Bluffs, the most exclusive black beach community in the country. Black people have lived in this pretty slip of the Vineyard since the 1600s and began buying property in the 1800s, making this posh town the embodiment of 'old money.' Every summer, Esperenza 'Perry' Soto escapes the fetid heat of New York City for the gorgeous weather, cool water, and stunning views Oak Bluffs offers. Sharing a cottage on the beach, owned by her 'Ama,...
Book cover for "What happens on vacation"
Star rating for What happens on vacation
Average Rating:
5 stars