11 Summertime Books to Read When You're Not Feeling Very Sunny
Once the seasonal malaise hits, these novels will help you unwind.
When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.
Sometimes, making it through the long days of summer can seem like living inside a Lana Del Rey song, especially when the malaise sets in. You know what we’re talking about: that muggy lethargy and shimmering haze that not even an Aperol spritz can fix. One minute, you’re trying on a new sundress and the next you’ve melted into a puddle, incapable of moving, let alone linking up with friends or, let’s be real, cracking open your blackout blinds.
Because we’ve all been there, we rounded up some great summertime reads that have a grasp on what it’s like to feel ennui on even sunny days, and can at least help you relax. From books about messy long weekends away to mysteries against vacation backdrops to sad girl classics that never get old, here’s what’s worth reading when you’re stuck in a summer bummer mood.
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest novel has arrived just in time to cure you of your summer blues. If you’ve been on the hunt for a juicy (and romantic) story with strong female characters and page-turning prose, look no further.
It’s the 1980s, and Joan Goodwin has landed the gig of a lifetime: joining NASA’s space shuttle program. Not only will she venture where so few people have gone, she’ll work alongside some of the brightest astronauts to ever walk, well, multiple planets. But while life is looking up, Joan is a victim of her times, suffering from breathtaking loneliness brought on by concealing her queerness.
Isolation can feel like you’re living on another planet, and Jenkins Reid captures this paradigm wonderfully, highlighting the beauty of chosen family, bravery to live as oneself, and the rocketing triumph of love. A major tearjerker (those last pages!), Jenkins Reid will have you so deep in your feelings that you’ll forget what brought you down in the first place, and leave you walking away with a refreshed hope in humanity.
It’s the early ‘90s in Corsica, and Séverine can’t wait until her high school graduation. She figures it will mark the beginning of what she’s sure to be an exciting, fresh chapter, full of dreamy days and flirting with boys, making the most out of the privilege she was born into, considering her father is an influential politician.
But when a militant group kidnaps her, Séverine must confront the implications of her father’s work. As negotiations for her release go sideways, Séverine wields her charm in hopes of figuring out how to escape. Feigning friendship, she gets to know her captors and begins reconsidering all that she once believed, ultimately becoming a spokesperson for the very group that got her into this ordeal. With an unexpected love interest and fame that she’s always wanted, Séverine will have to choose between going home and leaving this new life behind, or abandoning the privilege she so dearly loved.
If you’ve read Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto more times than you can count or have nursed a healthy obsession over the Patty Hearst trial, this book is begging to be added to your TBR.
If you’ve ever stayed up past your bedtime scrolling TikToks about Appalachian folklore and have a soft spot for literary thrillers, this might be your new favorite book.
Valerie, a seasoned hiker, has gone missing deep on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, igniting a search. Waiting for rescue and to pass the time, she pens letters to her mother, revealing her deteriorating state of mind—and the potential threat lurking in the woods. To save her, Lieutenant Bev and amateur detective Lena, a retired scientist, work to find Valerie before her mental health reaches a breaking point. To do so, the three women must cut themselves free from the thorny roots holding them back. Covering themes like motherhood and the thicket that loneliness can grow, this novel will have you hooked until the last page.
In this new release, a master sommelier and his partner have decided to welcome four wine experts to their vineyard to taste a rare fine wine. This alone could be a recipe for disaster (who hasn’t overindulged when with a group of strangers?), but further muddying the waters—err…wine—is that the sommelier’s guests are industry outcasts, each nursing damaged egos, disappointments and other professional disasters, which whet their appetite for self-destruction. So, when two of the guests discover the master sommelier is harboring a secret, the drama reaches a combustion point, leaving the rest of the group to pick up the pieces.
Reading like an afternoon spent nursing a hangover under the mercy of a beach umbrella, fans of Saltburn and The Dreamers will delight in prose that drips with boozy tension. Not a wine pro? Don’t stress, this book is heavy on drama, but light on the shop talk.
When Queen of the Beach Read, Elin Hilderbrand recommends a book to check out, you don’t ask questions, you just head to the closest bookstore. Such is the case for Mansion Beach, which the retired(ish) author recently touted in her podcast. A surprise to no one: She was right.
A modernized retelling of The Great Gatsby, this potboiler follows Nicola, who’s currently embarking on a fresh start, having left her career as a lawyer and all the trappings that went along with it, including her apartment and now ex-boyfriend. Courtesy of her cousin, who married into the Buchanan family, Nicola has holed up in a cottage on Block Island. She’d been looking forward to relaxing and unburdening herself of her past in her temporary home. Keeping her from the peaceful summer she’d fantasized about, however, is a noisy neighbor who can’t stop hosting wild parties. And so begins Nicola’s education of Juliana George, a successful tech entrepreneur whose closet is stuffed with as many skeletons as designer clothes.
Unfurled in a quippy voice rinsed in humor, Mansion Beach is a must-read for folks who enjoyed Emma Cline’s The Guest, Hildebrand’s The Perfect Couple, and, of course, the Gatsby OG.
Celebrating its centennial anniversary, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is still as prescient as it was when it was first published. A demonstration of Woolf’s command of language and rotating narration, Mrs. Dalloway is an exploration into memory, mental health, and queerness.
A refresher: A kaleidoscopic story spanning a day, the novel follows Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares for a party at her London home that evening. As Clarissa bustles about, she’s confronted by a couple of her exes (they always come out of the woodwork at the busiest time, don’t they?), as her husband languishes in the periphery. Meanwhile, one of her guests, Sir William Bradshaw, is busy treating Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD, who’s haunted by the death of one of his friends. As Septimus learns of his involuntary commitment to a hospital and Clarissa becomes caught in the net of girlhood memories, the story culminates in a heart-wrenching turn.
A tip: Once you’ve revisited the original, pick up a copy of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which inspired the feature film of the same title.
Fiction has long examined how the wealthy live. Everett continues the tradition with her upstairs-downstairs-oh-no novel. Meet Anna, an American who recently arrived in London for grad school. To make ends meet, Anna has tried just about every odd job on the planet—from bartending to tutoring high school students. Through the latter, Anna becomes friendly with the Wilders, a wealthy family of one of her students, Pippa. As she and Pippa connect, Anna is thrust into the opulent world of the Wilders. Soon, she finds herself globetrotting with the family as she helps Pippa prepare for the SATS, allegedly.
As Anna becomes increasingly besotted with the family and their lifestyle, she begins burying her blue-collar roots and ghosting her old friends (and life) to fit in. But not all that glitters is gold. And, when Anna’s job becomes threatened, she must decide what—and who—she sees in her future, and how much it’ll cost her to achieve it.
Some books draw you in from the first line. The Most by Jessica Anthony is one of them. When Kathleen Beckett, mother and housewife, wakes up on Sunday morning, she doesn't feel like going to church. This is a big deal: It’s the first Sunday she’ll have missed church since she and her family moved to Delaware less than a year ago. Even though their apartment is smaller than their former home and has all the latest luxuries the modern 1950s can offer, it is still a lot to maintain. Kathleen also needs a break. So, with her husband and two sons out of the house, she decides to make the most of the strangely warm weather and take a dip in her apartment complex’s swimming pool. Only one thing: She refuses to get out.
Reading like an alternate version of John Cheever’s legendary short story, The Swimmer, The Most is a taut novel that illuminates gender roles and imbalances in family and society. With timeless prose that could have been written in the sixties as much as today, The Most will keep you thinking about it long after you’ve read the last page.
If you’re someone who likes to decamp to museums on miserably muggy days, this might be for you. Managing to explore the complexity and wonder of friendship without feeling cringey, My Friends is one part art mystery and another part homage to the relationships that can emerge when you’re a teenager.
On the surface, this novel could appear like any old story about best friends spending a summer together—but that would be shortsighted. Told in dual timelines, readers will meet a variety of friends at different stages of their lives. Take, for example, Joar, Ted, Ali, and the unnamed artist, who support one another through rough home lives, bonding as a means of survival and defiance.
Then there’s Louisa, a teenager coming to terms with the death of her best friend, who’s on the hunt for a mysterious painting, born out of the friend group in the other timeline. Full of surprises, this novel is full of twists that will not only have you deeply invested in the characters, but itching to discover who’s behind the painting, and what inspired it in the first place.
Recently crowned the winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Safekeep is a claustrophobic novel that sinks under your skin. With only her maid for company, Isabel is a recluse who keeps busy maintaining her mother’s country house in the Netherlands. Isabel’s days are predictable, falling into a steady rhythm of cleaning and repair. All around, progress is happening. Finally, nearly 20 years after WWII, the wounds from the war are healing.
But when her brother unexpectedly drops off his new girlfriend, Eva, to stay with Isabel, her domestic calm is derailed. Isabel can’t stand Eva, from the way she noses into everything to her loud demeanor. But over time, Isabel’s dismay transforms into infatuation, thickening the tension to a breakable degree. Harkening back to the heady tone of Rebecca, readers will hold their breath as the stuffy drama unravels in surprising directions.
Right this way for fans of White Lotus and Big Little Lies. 30 years ago, Sarah Lingate was found dead at the bottom of her wealthy family’s estate in Capri. Though declared as an accident, there’s mounting evidence to the contrary. As a result, fractures have crackled throughout the family, even though no one was ever charged.
Now, with the return of a family heirloom, Sarah’s daughter Helen becomes obsessed with solving her mother’s case, even if no one in her family will help. Fortunately, Lorna, her family’s assistant, is happy to pitch in. When Lorna disappears, the mystery’s complexity doubles. To get to the bottom of Lorna’s vanishing, Helen must solve her mother’s cold case, once and for all.
