Top Summer Reads for Those Long, Lazy Evenings

“One of the best things about summer is the extra daylight hours for reading.” Let’s make the most of it! Here’s a curated list of books to complement those hot summer days and cool evenings.

This Summer I Became Pretty

A coming-of-age story about first love, friendship, and growing up. Light, enjoyable, and perfect for summer reading! For all her fifteen years, Belly was a sweet, modest, and unnoticeable girl. She always lived in the shadow of her older brother and best friend. To Jeremy and Conrad, the sons of her mother’s friend, Belly was like a little sister they never had. But this summer, everything changes.

The novel has a sequel, “It’s Not Summer Without You,” and has been adapted into a series, so you can draw inspiration from the show and watch it after reading for an even more immersive experience.

Firsts

A debut novel by journalist Maria Oleksa. A bright story about experiences that never repeat – first kisses and first love, boundless dreams, and plans for the future. The story of two young people, Ravlik and Vla, who met too early to understand what they could become to each other.

Summer camp, an orange sweater, letters, and walks through old Kyiv. Their summer was never supposed to end. But, of course, that’s not how life works. The characters grow up, make important decisions, make mistakes, grow, create new places and meanings, and finally understand where they’ve been running all this time.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

An aging and reclusive Hollywood icon, Evelyn Hugo, is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown journalist Monique Grant for the job, everyone is surprised. Regardless of why Evelyn chose her, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. She listens, captivated, as Evelyn tells her story of the seven husbands, ruthless ambition, the dark side of old Hollywood, and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a real connection with the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its end, it becomes clear that their lives intersect in tragic and irreversible ways. Learn more.

Dandelion Wine

This book by Ray Bradbury is a timeless classic that captures the essence of childhood summers. The pages breathe with distant, endless childhood memories: warm, intoxicating, eternal, yet impossible to recapture.

Summer in the fictional town of Green Town in 1928, the carefree antics of four boys, and dandelion wine made by their grandfather. It’s like a magical time capsule that absorbs the experiences of past summers, a nostalgia for childhood that anyone who picks up this fantastic tale can briefly revisit.

The Recipe for a Perfect Wife

Alice Hale, the protagonist, leaves her PR career to become a writer. But things don’t go as planned. She spends a lot of time in a big empty house, feeling bored, and her plans don’t align with her husband’s. One day, she finds an old cookbook belonging to the previous owner who lived there with her husband in the 1950s.

Besides recipes, Alice discovers encrypted hints about married life and notices similarities between this woman’s story and her own. This makes her question her relationship with her husband. She begins to take control of her life and protect herself using a few secrets from the book.