The Ultimate Summer Book Recommendations: What to Read by the Beach

This one is a few summers old now but it’s still on my list. I’m looking forward to finally reading it this summer!

The story follows Percy and Sam who grew up as best friends at their family cottages on the lake, until their friendship became something more and then fell apart. Years later, a phone call brings Percy back to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral and old feelings resurface. Told across six summers and one weekend, it’s a nostalgic, heartfelt story about first love, mistakes, and second chances.

Someone’s murdering celebrities in the sleepy village of Marlow, and it’s up to amateur sleuths Judith, Suzie, and Becks to catch the killer, without their usual police backup. Things get personal when a woman shows up accusing Judith of murdering her late husband decades ago, forcing old secrets to the surface. A cozy, charming mystery full of friendship, twists, and small-town scandal.

This is a book I’m currently re-reading because it just got a TV adaptation on Peacock, starring Jennifer Garner! I loved this book the first time around, and I’m excited to revisit it with the show in mind.

Grieving the loss of her husband, food blogger Hollis invites four friends, one from each era of her life, to her Nantucket home for a picture-perfect weekend getaway. But as old dynamics resurface and secrets come out, the “perfect” weekend takes some unexpected turns.

A widow treats herself to a luxurious river cruise through Paris, where she’s swept up by a handsome, attentive stranger. When he turns up dead shortly after, she realizes she’s stumbled into something far more dangerous than a vacation romance. Equal parts charming and suspensful. It’s a fun twisty read!

A missing dog leads a woman back to a house tangled up in long-buried secrets, forcing old wounds and unanswered questions to the surface. Lisa Jewell delivers her signature blend of warmth, suspense, and page-turning family drama.

An 86-year-old stranger named Theo arrives in a small Southern town and begins quietly buying back portraits of local residents from a coffeehouse,then hand-delivers each one to its subject, asking only for their story in return. What follows is a gentle, moving portrait of a community transformed by generosity, kindness, and being truly seen, with a mystery about Theo’s own identity woven throughout.

An artist named Eden returns home from a run before her big gallery opening, only to find her key doesn’t work and a woman who looks eerily like her answers the door, with her own husband insisting she’s the imposter. Woven in is the story of Birdy, a woman who inherited the house six months earlier after a life-changing diagnosis. Twisty, fast-paced, and full of surprises, this is a domestic thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end.