My Summer 2025 Reading List

13 books to take you from Memorial Day to Labor Day

The weather in Michigan is always a toss-up, but summer is acting especially shy this year. In the last week we’ve had overnight temperatures in the 30s, sequential days of rain, and hazy days from the leftover smoke of Canada’s wildfires.

We will complain about it, but we won’t let it get us down.

A rare sunny day spent having a picnic next to the Manistee River over Memorial Day Weekend.

I’ve been doing my best to garden every free moment I can when the weather is cooperating. Beyond that, I’m trying to find the perfect wedding guest dress for an upcoming wedding, baking Ghirardelli’s new gluten free brownies, or lounging in the hammock with a good book.

Summer 2025 Reading List

Below are the 13 books I’m excited to read this summer! I’ve compiled this list to include a mix of genres, publication dates, and vibes.

1. Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes

Let’s travel to Hawaii and learn more about hula this summer!

Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes tells the story of Hi’i, the daughter of a legendary hula family with many unknowns: She’s never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never told her who her father is.

As fractures within her tight-knit community continue to grow, she has the opportunity to live up to her name by winning the Miss Aloha Hula competition.

But in order to do that, she’ll have to forget everything she’s been taught and possibly lose the one thing she was fighting for.

2. A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony Bourdain

If you’re not traveling anywhere this summer you can still expand your horizons with A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony Bourdain.

Published in 2002, this book takes us along for the ride on his quest to find the perfect meal as he travels from California to Cambodia.

I love watching travel and cooking shows, and I’m so ready to consume the book version.

3. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Sophi is an extraordinary aerialist for the circus. She’s also part woman, part swan.

An American journalist gets wind of this and wants to discover her true identity. Is she really part swan, or is she all fake?

He’ll join the circus to find out.

4. The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

A young playwright is waiting for her famous father’s verdict on her new show.

Her father is a well-known author, except his novels didn’t age very gracefully. And he has no idea that his daughter’s new show is based on a vacation the two of them took a few years prior to an island off Sicily.

Her play is receiving rave reviews, and as soon as the curtains drop, her dad realizes that he’s about to get roasted.

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya is filled with nuance about the arguments between fathers and daughters and the inheritances each generation leaves for the next.

5. Wild West Village by Lola Kirke

Lola Kirke is the youngest daughter of a rockstar father and a clothing designer mother. Her book Wild West Village is specifically listed as not a memoir.

This collection of essays explores her upbringing in an English family of eccentric artists living in a West Village brownstone that hosted everyone from Cuban exiles to Courtney Love.

Above all, it’s a quest for finding herself amidst the chaos of her home life. It’s funny, dark, weird, and spirited.

6. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo tells the story of Flor, a woman who can predict down to the day when someone will die.

So when she calls her family together for a living wake, they’re all wondering who’s going to die.

Flor refuses to tell her sisters what’s going on, but she soon learns that they’re hiding secrets from her too. Secrets that will affect the next generation.

We follow the lives of each sister, past and present, to see how they’ll join together to better navigate the future.

7. Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death by Maria Vale

Death has previously taken Molly Molloy’s parents, her grandparents, and her first love. The grim reaper was supposed to take Molly’s soul too, but he accidentally saves her instead while she’s choking on a chicken wing.

The powers that be need him to fix his mistake, but will he fall in love with her before that’s possible?

8. The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama

It’s the early days of Hollywood, and America is falling in love with silent movies. So is Wong Liu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who own a laundry.

While she diligently obeys her parents during the day, she also finds time to sneak away to the local movie theater. She falls in love with film and is determined to become an actress. She creates a stage name, Anna May Wong, and leaves school at sixteen to pursue her dreams.

But her beauty and her talent isn’t enough for traditional Hollywood, and she’s cast as the helpless exotic butterfly or a murderous dragon lady while white actresses are put in yellowface to play starring roles portraying Asian women.

The Brightest Star is the story of her fight to win lead roles, financially support her family, and keep her love affairs a secret. The ultimate old Hollywood experience.

9. Evenings & Weekends by Oisin McKenna

It’s summer 2019 in London, and everyone’s out and about at the parks, beer gardens, and street corners…except for Maggie, who’s 30, pregnant, and broke.

She moved back to London, a place she doesn’t want to be, after accidentally getting pregnant by her boyfriend Ed.

Ed is running from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil, who is living for the weekend and falling for his housemate, Keith. Keith has a boyfriend and there isn’t room for three in this relationship.

As Saturday night looms, their lives are going to change forever.

10. Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

Let’s get weird this summer with Sky Daddy by Kate Folk.

Sky Daddy follows Linda, a woman wanting to lead a regular life at her day job. On weekends she enjoys her true passion of taking a round-trip flight out of San Francisco to be with her soulmate…an airplane. She’s obsessed with planes and believes it’s her destiny to marry one of them.

But when the opportunity arises to actually live out her dream, her real life and her obsessions begin to spiral out of control.

The classic love story gets a makeover in this novel.

11. Set Piece by Lana Schwartz

This romance novella is short and sweet, perfect for throwing in your bag for the beach!

Set Piece by Lana Schwartz follows a steamy TV star who gets rescued from his rabid fans by a gorgeous but practical bartender. They have a little tryst at the end of the night and go their separate ways.

Five years later, the TV star shows up on set for the adaptation of The Great Gatsby only to find out that the film’s production designer is his beautiful bartender.

Except they’re both very different people now. He’s a bonafide celebrity and she’s a single mom with a four-year-old.

They might be different people, but their chemistry is still just as fiery. Do they have room in their lives for anything more than one memorable night together?

12. Maggie: Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar takes personal tragedy and transforms it into a defiant comedy.

A man and a woman walk into a restaurant expecting to have a lovely dinner. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.

Later, her chest starts to hurt. She visits the examination room to find out that her pain goes deeper than heartbreak–it’s cancer.

We follow her over the next few months as she gets acquainted with her tumor, explores her feelings about her husband’s affair, and helps her kids fall in love with their shared culture through Chinese folklore.

It’s only 208 pages and releasing on July 22, making this a perfect beach read.

13. Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola

Even though it’s being released on September 2nd, the day after Labor Day, I had to include Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola.

Kiki Banjo is 28 years old and hosts a popular dating and life advice podcast. After a few career setbacks and a devastating breakup, she’s hanging on by a thread as she prepares to be the maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding.

Who is going to show up at that wedding other than her ex-boyfriend Malakai, the best man and the person who shattered her heart to pieces.

They’ll have to play nice until the wedding is over, but they can’t ignore their chemistry forever.

Bonus, this is a standalone novel, but it does continue the story from Honey and Spice, which was another delightful romance.

Which books are you bringing to the beach this summer? I always want to add more to my list!

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