In this post, I’ll be sharing my top picks from a curated summer TBR list featuring light and air contemporary titles, perfect for poolside reading.
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As summer approaches, I’m in the mood for some light and cheerful books to add to my reading list โ those perfect for lazy days at the beach, park, or poolside tanning sessions.
I have gathered a selection of popular titles that take you to idyllic summer destinations like charming beach towns, tropical islands, lakeside cottages, and bustling city streets.
The majority of the books on my 2024 summer reading list belong to the rom-com/chick-lit genres. However, I’ve added some mystery/suspense novels for those days when I’m in the mood for something slightly darker.
Although these titles are likely far from literary masterpieces, Iโm looking forward to some easy and enjoyable reads that offer a perfect dose of relaxed escapism.
So… if you’re in need of some new summer reading recommendations, take a peek at the list below. Come along with me as I unwind and float away in bookish bliss during the upcoming sun-drenched months!
Books to add to your “Summer TBR List“
Click on a title for the synopsis and purchase links. For even more summer reading suggestions, click here to see my complete list.
- Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren
- The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
- Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
- Summer of ’99 by J.L. Hyde
- Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
- Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
- The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton
- Funny Story by Emily Henry
- The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
- The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary
- Park Avenue Summer by Renรฉe Rosen
- Done and Dusted: A Rebel Blue Ranch Novel by Lyla Sage
1 / Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulosโthe first and only love of her lifeโthe careful bubble sheโs constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macyโs entire worldโgrowing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much moreโspending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macyโs decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
2 / The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
Hollis Shawโs life seems picture-perfect. Sheโs the creator of the popular food blogย Hungry with Hollisย and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollisโs perfect lifeโher strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Carolineโgrow deeper.
So when Hollis hears about something called a โFive-Star Weekendโโone woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlifeโshe decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesnโt turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.
The husband of Hollisโs childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollisโs first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollisโs best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Annโs career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a clientโs mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollisโs friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then thereโs Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it happens, has many secrets.
3 / Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each otherโs out, and theyโll both go on to find the love of their lives. Itโs a bonkers ideaโฆ and it just might work.
Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
It’s supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected–including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
4 / Summer of ’99 by J.L. Hyde
For over four decades, Camp Shady Oaks was the premiere youth camp for a summer filled with nature, survival skills, and fun in the remote woods of the Hiawatha National Forest. In 1999, it was forced to close abruptly when tragedy struck.
What is now the abandoned location of one of Michiganโs most notorious unsolved mysteries gains national attention when former camper Quinn Harstead pens a best-selling account of the events that occurred.
The camp remains empty and frozen in time for twenty-three years before Quinn receives an invitation for its grand reopening. Will she return to the place that continues to haunt her memories in search of answers, or will the secrets of Shady Oaks stay buried forever?
5 / Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process;ย Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she canโt have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.ย
Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New Yorkโs one-percenters,ย Pineapple Streetย is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveableโif fallibleโcharacters, itโs about the peculiar unknowability of someone elseโs family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first loveโall wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.
6 / Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings
Magnolia Parksย andย BJ Ballentineย are meant to be, and everyone knows it.
She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of every sad endeavor to get over one another, itโs still each other they crawl back to.
But now their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world theyโve built; a world where neither has ever let the other go completely.
As the cracks start to show and secrets begin to surface, Magnolia and BJ are finally forced to face the formidable question theyโve been avoiding all their lives: How many loves do you really get in a lifetime?
7 / The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton
Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She’s also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it’s a pleasant existence. Until the men show up.
Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is smitten with Cecilia from the moment they meet. Unfortunately, that happens to be while he’s under direct orders to kill her. His employer, Captain Morvath, who possesses a gothic abbey bristling with cannons and an unbridled hate for the world, intends to rid England of all its presumptuous women, starting with the Wisteria Society. Ned has plans of his own. But both men have made one grave mistake. Never underestimate a woman.
When Morvath imperils the Wisteria Society, Cecilia is forced to team up with her handsome would-be assassin to save the women who raised her–hopefully proving, once and for all, that she’s as much of a scoundrel as the rest of them.
8 / Funny Story by Emily Henry
Daphne always loved the way her fiancรฉ Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling itโฆright up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
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Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a childrenโs librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petraโs ex, Miles Nowak.
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ย Scruffy and chaoticโwith a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads โMiles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that sheโs either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
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But itโs all just for show, ofย course,ย because thereโs no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancรฉโs new fiancรฉeโs exโฆright?
9 / The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam โWestโ Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought sheโd 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 heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. Thereโs just one catch.
Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfatherโs will, Liam wonโt see a penny until heโs been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks heโs in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person heโs afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parentsโhis unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.
But in the presence of his family, Liamโs fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.
10 / The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary
Four years ago, Dylan and Addie fell in love under the Provence sun. Wealthy Oxford student Dylan was staying at his friend Cherryโs enormous French villa; wild child Addie was spending her summer as the on-site caretaker. Two years ago, their relationship officially ended. They havenโt spoken since.
Today, Dylanโs and Addieโs lives collide again. Itโs the day before Cherryโs wedding, and Addie and Dylan crash cars at the start of the journey there. The car Dylan was driving is wrecked, and the wedding is in rural Scotlandโheโll never get there on time by public transport.
So, along with Dylanโs best friend, Addieโs sister, and a random guy on Facebook who needed a ride, they squeeze into a space-challenged Mini and set off across Britain. Cramped into the same space, Dylan and Addie are forced to confront the choices they made that tore them apartโand ask themselves whether that final decision was the right one after all.
11 / Park Avenue Summer by Renรฉe Rosen
New York City is filled with opportunities for single girls like Alice Weiss, who leaves her small Midwestern town to chase her big-city dreams and unexpectedly lands a job working for the first female editor in chief ofย Cosmopolitanย magazine, Helen Gurley Brown.
For Alice, who wants to be a photographer, it seems like the perfect foot in the door, but nothing could have prepared her for the world she enters. Editors and writers resign on the spot, refusing to work for the woman who wrote the scandalous bestsellerย Sex and the Single Girl, and confidential memos, article ideas, and cover designs keep finding their way into the wrong hands. When someone tries to pull Alice into a scheme to sabotage her boss, she is more determined than ever to help Helen succeed.
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While pressure mounts at the magazine, Alice struggles not to lose sight of her own dreams as sheโs swept up into a glamorous world of five-star dinners, lavish parties, and men who are certainly no good. Because if Helen Gurley Brown has taught her anything, itโs that a woman can demand to have it all.
12 / Done and Dusted: A Rebel Blue Ranch Novel by Lyla Sage
For the first time in her life, Clementine โEmmyโ Ryder has no idea what sheโs doing. Sheโs accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite thing: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.
Luke Brooks is Meadowlarkโs most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. Heโs also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmyโs older brotherโs best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. Itโs been years since heโs seen her, but when she walks into his bar and back into his life, he canโt take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgment, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.
Emmyโs got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friendโs younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?
I hope you stumbled across some gems in this list that piqued your interest! I can hardly wait to kick back by the pool, lost in a sunny, feel-good novel that screams summer vibes.
Happy Reading!
For more book Summer TBR List book recommendations, check out my complete list here!
Xx Laura
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