The 20 best new books to add to your summer reading list

What will you be reading?

If you are a book enthusiast, then you know that summer is the best season for juicy fiction and gripping page-turners. So now that it is appropriate beach weather, you will find us lounging by the water with a book, or three because we couldn’t choose just one.

From multi-generational fiction, to young-adult romances and thrillers that will keep you on the edge, here are the 2o books to add to your summer reading list and your beach bag.

The Bride Test, by Helen Hoagn

The follow up to Helen Hoang’s debut novel, The Kiss Quotient, is here. This time, we’re following the story of Khai Diep, a man who doesn’t think he’s capable of having feelings. He’s still unconvinced when his family tries to assure him that his autism makes him process emotions differently, and his mom sets out to find him the perfect bride in Vietnam.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Vivian Morris is a woman who has earned and relished every one of her 89 years. In this novel by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, she looks back at the mistake that changed her path, and how she learned to shed shame amongst the hedonistic denizens of the New York City theater world of the 1940s.

What Red Was, by Rosie Price

What Red Was is an incisive and mesmerising novel about power, privilege, and consent–one that fearlessly explores the effects of trauma on the mind and body of a young woman, the tyrannies of memory, the sacrifices involved in staying silent, and the courage in speaking out. And when Kate does, it raises this urgent question: whose story is it now?

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

The Lee family is disappearing. First, it’s Amy’s grandmother, who passes away. Then, her older sister Sylvie is seemingly swallowed up by New York. Amy’s urgent search takes her back into her own family’s history, and into the secrets she didn’t even know Sylvie had.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women’s lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon. The titular story “Hot Comb” is about a young girl’s first perm – a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming “too white” in the all-black neighbourhood her family has just moved to. Realisations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking.

Is There Still Sex in the City? by Candace Bushnell

Twenty years after her sharp, seminal first book Sex and the City reshaped the landscape of pop culture and dating with its fly on the wall look at the mating rituals of the Manhattan elite, the trailblazing Candace Bushnell delivers a new book on the wilds and lows of dating after fifty.

Mrs. Everything, by Jennifer Weiner

From Jennifer Weiner, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Who Do You Love and In Her Shoes, comes a smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places—and be true to themselves—in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history—and herstory—as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives.

The Wedding Party, by Jasmine Guillory

Jasmine Guillory broke out with her 2018 debut romance novel, The Wedding Date, and her follow-up, a loose sequel centered around side characters from The Wedding Date, promises to be just as sweet and just as fun. In The Wedding Party, two members of Alexa’s bridal party hate each other — but they also can’t quite keep their hands off each other. The only thing to do is to keep their relationship secret and put an expiration date on it. Hijinks ensue.

The Friend Zone, by Abby Jimenez

Kristen Petersen doesn’t do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don’t get her. She’s also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children. The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass.

Normal People, by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo

Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the quintessential American backdrop of Chicago and its prospering suburbs, Lombardo’s debut explores the triumphs and burdens of love, the fraught tethers of parenthood and sisterhood, and the baffling mixture of affection, abhorrence, resistance, and submission we feel for those closest to us. In painting this luminous portrait of a family’s becoming, Lombardo joins the ranks of writers such as Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathan Franzen as visionary chroniclers of our modern lives.

Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo

Based on years of immersive reporting, and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is a groundbreaking portrait of longing in today’s America, exposing the fragility, complexity, and inequality of female desire with unprecedented depth and emotional power. It is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy, that introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory: Stories, by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

From the creator and executive producer of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love–the best and worst thing in the universe. Equally at home with the surreal and the painfully relatable (or both at once), Bob-Waksberg delivers a killer combination of humor, romance, whimsy, cultural commentary, and crushing emotional vulnerability. The resulting collection is a punchy, perfect bloody valentine.

Never Have I Ever, by Joshilyn Jackson

A diabolically entertaining tale of betrayal, deception, temptation, and love filled with dark twists leavened by Joshilyn Jackson’s trademark humor, Never Have I Ever explores what happens when the transgressions of our past come back with a vengeance.

How Could She, by Lauren Mechling

An assured and savagely funny novel about three 30-something friends as they navigate careers, husbands, an ex-fiancé, new suitors, and, most importantly, their relationships with one another. Hilarious and fiercely observed, How Could She is an essential novel of female friendship, an insider’s look into the cutthroat world of New York media–from print to podcasting–and a witty exploration of the ways we can and cannot escape our pasts. 

When We Left Cuba, by Chanel Cleeton

In 1960s Florida, a young Cuban exile will risk her life–and heart–to take back her country in this exhilarating historical novel from the author of Next Year in Havana, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. As the Cold War swells like a hurricane over the shores of the Florida Strait, Beatriz is caught between the clash of Cuban American politics and the perils of a forbidden affair with a powerful man driven by ambitions of his own. When the ever-changing tides of history threaten everything she has fought for, she must make a choice between her past and future–but the wrong move could cost Beatriz everything–not just the island she loves, but also the man who has stolen her heart.

With the Fire on High, by Elizabeth Acevedo

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing