Summer reading has always had a particular fantasy to it. A linen shirt, an iced drink sweating beside you, and a coastal breeze if life is feeling particularly generous. Stories where people spiral a little, reinvent themselves dramatically, or stare out windows contemplating the meaning of existence. There’s just something about summer that magnifies emotion. Maybe it’s the longer days, or nostalgia, or the way everyone collectively loses their minds the second the temperature rises above 30°C. These are reads for the high school crowd and beyond. So whether you’re looking for sharp literary fiction, chaotic coming-of-age stories, or something emotionally devastating, these are the books to read this summer.

Recommendations to Read This Summer 2026

The Guest by Emma Cline

If summer had a slightly sinister undercurrent, it would probably look like The Guest. Emma Cline writes the kind of tension that feels deceptively calm until you realize your shoulders have been clenched for 200 pages. What unfolds is a hazy, unsettling spiral through privilege, performance, and survival. It’s sticky with heat, discomfort, and the particular weirdness of trying to reinvent yourself before everything catches up to you. Perfect for readers who enjoy morally questionable characters making increasingly stressful decisions while the sun blazes overhead.

Penance by Eliza Clark

If your ideal summer read involves internet obsession, true crime culture, and realizing humanity may actually be doomed, Penance is for you. Structured like a pseudo true-crime investigation, the novel examines the murder of a teenage girl and the media frenzy surrounding it. Darkly funny, unsettling, and painfully online, this is the kind of book that makes you put it down every few chapters just to stare at a wall for a moment. Which is sometimes exactly what summer reading should do (in our humble opinion).

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Despite the title, this is not your standard “love story” involving grand gestures in the rain or dramatically running through an airport. In fact, romantic love is almost beside the point. Dolly Alderton’s memoir is really about friendship, the ones that shape your youth more than any relationship ever could. Terrible decisions, cramped flatshares, growing apart, growing up, and eventually realising that the people who witnessed your most embarrassing phases are often the great loves of your life. It’s funny, warm, and more cathartic than you’ll expect. 

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

No, unfortunately, we are not talking about the shoes. Nor the Puma Speedcats. Set in 1970s Baltimore, this coming-of-age novel follows fourteen-year-old Mary Jane as she begins nannying for a household that is significantly cooler, louder, and more chaotic than her own conservative family. There’s rock music, emotional honesty, and enough culture shock to completely alter the trajectory of her summer. 

Warm and charming without feeling overly sentimental, Mary Jane captures that strange teenage moment where you’re hit with the realisation that adults are just people making things up as they go. A perfect summer coming-of-age story for anyone who enjoys nostalgic chaos and found-family dynamics.

Summer by Ali Smith

It would feel almost illegal to make a summer reading list without including this one. The final instalment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, Summer, blends politics, memory, art, and human connection into something fragmented yet hopeful. The prose feels both urgent and dreamlike. An accurate portrait of recent years and how intertwined our personal lives are with the world lurching along around us. This is less “light beach read” and more “sit quietly under a tree contemplating humanity” type of summer book. Which, to be fair, is also an important seasonal activity.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout has a remarkable ability to make ordinary conversations feel monumental. Tell Me Everything follows Bob Burgess, a small-town lawyer in coastal Maine, who gets pulled into defending a man accused of murdering his own mother. In between, Bob has fallen into a deep friendship with writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea. They go on walks, talk about their lives, their regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, strikes up an unlikely friendship with Olive Kitteridge, and the two spend afternoons trading stories about people they’ve known. It’s a book about what holds people together. And as Lucy puts it: “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.” Perfect for readers who want a reflective summer read that still lingers long after the final page.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Correspondent explores connection, loneliness, and the relationships we build entirely through words. There’s something timeless about epistolary (meaning: involving or consisting of letter writing) storytelling in summer. Maybe it’s because letters and emails feel more reflective and suited to afternoons where time stretches lazily. A lovely pick for readers who enjoy character-driven fiction and emotional subtlety.

Foster by Claire Keegan

Set during the summer of 1981 in the rural Irish countryside, Foster follows a young girl sent away to live with relatives while her overwhelmed parents try to manage at home. What begins as a temporary arrangement unfolds into something far more tender about absence and the life-changing power of being truly seen. Claire Keegan accomplishes more in just over 100 pages than some novels do in 500. Originally published in The New Yorker before becoming a standalone novella, Foster earned widespread acclaim for good reason. It’s brief, devastatingly beautiful, and the kind of story that stays with you long after you finish it.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

How could we not include a true classic? Set in California’s Salinas Valley, East of Eden feels drenched in heat and sunlight from the very first pages. Steinbeck famously contrasts the bright eastern mountains with the darker western range, creating a landscape that feels both beautiful and oppressive under the summer sun.

The novel itself is expansive, emotional, and deeply human. Family conflict, morality, inheritance, love, cruelty, identity. It’s the kind of novel people spend years saying they’ll eventually read, only to finish it and immediately wonder why they waited so long.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Elizabeth Zott might be one of the most compelling protagonists in recent fiction. Brilliant, stubborn, unintentionally hilarious, and completely unwilling to shrink herself for anyone. Set in the 1960s, Lessons in Chemistry follows a chemist forced out of academia who unexpectedly becomes the host of a cooking show. It’s a sharp exploration of sexism, ambition, grief, and resilience. There’s also the adaptation if books aren’t entirely your thing. However, this is also your sign to try the book anyway (because, respectfully, books are almost always better 👀).

Not Much of a Reader? We’ve Got You Covered Too

Summer reading sounds lovely in theory, but sometimes, after a long day, committing to an entire novel feels ambitious. Or perhaps you’re more of a “one episode turns into five” kind of person (no judgment here). So in the spirit of keeping this list accessible to everyone, we’ve also included a few documentaries worth watching this summer. 

David Attenborough turned 100 this year, and somehow his documentaries only seem to get more essential with time. If summer for you means slowing down, appreciating nature, or briefly fantasizing about disappearing into the countryside for a month, these are a few classics worth revisiting:

• Planet Earth — a true classic and still one of the most breathtaking documentary series ever made.
• Our Planet — beautifully filmed and perfect for a slower summer evening.
• A Life on Our Planet — part documentary, part reflection on climate change, humanity, and the future we’re shaping together.

And then there’s My Octopus Teacher, which has technically been around for a while, but if you missed it, now might be the perfect time to finally watch it. The film follows filmmaker Craig Foster as he develops an unlikely connection with a wild octopus living in a South African kelp forest. What begins as curiosity slowly unfolds into something surprisingly moving, thoughtful, and emotional. Plus, it’s visually stunning in that calming, almost meditative way nature documentaries do so well. Fair warning, though: you may come away emotionally attached to an octopus.

And speaking of octopuses, did you know Remarkably Bright Creatures (which we featured in our Spring 2025 reading list) has been adapted? We already know what we’ll be watching this summer!

Let Summer Reading Begin

Whether you’re reading by the pool, hiding from the heat indoors, or commuting with an audiobook, we hope one of these books finds its way into your season. And if there’s a book that feels undeniably like summer to you, the kind you’d press into someone’s hands and say “just trust me”, we want to hear about it!