The Best Beach Reads Of The Summer

Gala is a trans woman who works at a hostel in New Mexico—and she’s a super fan of a long-lost band called the Get Happies. Obsessed with why the band broke up, and never released their last album, Summer Fun, she begins writing letters to one of the band members. So begins this epistolary, musical novel that explores the ideas of what it means to create, collaborate, and just exist as an authentic person in the world.

As teenagers, Eva and Shane spent one hot week together, madly in love—but it didn’t work out. Now, 15 years later, they are both successful writers with lives of their own. But when they meet again, they can’t help but rekindle what they started years ago. If you want something super steamy to go with your tropical vacation, or if you are all about reading about creatives in high society, this is your best pick.

Written by Jennifer Weiner, one of the bosses of the beach read, That Summer is a page-turner about female friendship that will make afternoons at your kids’ swim lessons fly by. The story centers around Daisy and Diana, two women thrown together simply because they have a very similar email address. But as the story unfolds, we discover that something more tangible does connect the women—and they might truly need each other. While this is an addictive read with a beach on the cover, this one gets deep, and is the perfect summer read pick for someone who likes a little more seriousness in their story.

Lady Sunshine mixes 70s nostalgia, artist compounds, and endless summer days for a shimmering, light-speckled novel about creativity, friendship, and belonging. The story follows Jackie, a woman who once spent a summer on her uncle’s artsy California estate The Sandcastle, before returning to her normal life. Now, years later, she’s inherited The Sandcastle, and she can’t help but return, emotionally, to that magical summer as she prepares the estate for sale. At the same time, there’s a page-turning plot involving the mysterious end to that first summer, and you won’t stop reading until you find out exactly what happened.