Best Beach Reads for Summer 2026

Book Summary

Maggie is a 49-year-old gallery owner who has been scammed out of her life savings by a romantic fraudster. Twenty-something Flick is a junior reporter looking for a big career break, and she thinks that exposing Maggie’s romance scammer might be just the answer.

Together, these two unlikely allies embark on a wild ride across Europe, chasing the con man. Along the way, however, they may just find something even bigger.

Book Summary

Thea and Alex have a lot in common… and yet, somehow, nothing at all. Both are divorced, love food, and hate where they live. But while Alex is a world-class chef, Thea has never cooked. Alex feels stuck in his hometown, and Thea resents the same town for never quite feeling like home. Thea and her ex are battling it out for custody of their dog, while Alex and his ex are amicably co-parenting their daughter.

In just two years’ time, Thea and Alex went from having just a few friends in common to being best friends themselves. But it all started as a lie.

When their exes got together right after getting divorced, Thea and Alex spun a spite-fueled story about being old friends and first loves. Somehow, that ruse has grown into a real friendship, and now their exes have invited them on a joint vacation. A two-week, two-family beach vacation, daughter and dog included.

They really are friends now, but has the story they originally spun gotten away from them? Or is it the start of their happy ending?

Book Summary

Needing a change from her life in London, Skye enters a lottery for a chance to win a cottage on a Greek island for just one Euro. She is thrilled to win, but when she arrives at the cottage, it is even more run-down than she expected. Nonetheless, she immediately feels at home.

She finds her place among a community of other lottery winners who have taken over other cottages on the island, which haven’t been occupied since the 1940s. Her new, found family provides the support she needs to stand up to her abusive ex-husband, allowing her to embrace the hope of new beginnings.

When Skye begins renovating the cottage with the help of local contractor, Andreas, they find a bundle of mysterious letters hidden in the wall. Through the contents of the letters, they begin to unravel the history of the prior residents and the truth about Katerina’s life on this picturesque island during WWII.

Book Summary

Frankie and George have been best friends since they were eight years old, but their similarly passionate, impulsive, and headstrong personalities have also caused a lot of clashes over the years. They always seem to find a way to come back together, until now. Frankie’s wedding is quickly approaching, and she doesn’t even know if George will show up to be her best man.

The weekend of wedding festivities kicks off, and George appears just in time. For one glorious evening, everything is perfect in Frankie’s world.

And then it’s not. The next morning, her fiancé dumps her with nothing more than a note as an explanation. Frankie returns home to wallow, but George thinks the best way for her to heal her broken heart is to go on her honeymoon – with him.

Frankie agrees, seeing a week in the lush rainforests and misty beaches of Tofino, British Columbia, as a chance to finally repair their friendship. But doing so may just unearth long-buried secrets and feelings that neither of them is prepared to deal with.

Book Summary

Layla has spent a year convincing herself that she’s totally over her amicable, but still painful, divorce from her college sweetheart. As a physician, she is committed to maintaining a mature, rational demeanor, even in her dealings with her ex and his family. That’s why, when her former sister-in-law invites Layla to her destination wedding in Paris, Layla can’t decline, despite the fact that it’s where she once spent her own honeymoon, and her ex is bringing a date.

In the days leading up to the wedding, Layla chats about some of the choices she made when she was younger. Layla thinks it’s just a harmless conversation, but her words cause the bride to get cold feet.

The grumpy best man, Griffin, is determined to ensure the wedding goes off without a hitch. Since Layla broke it, he insists that she help him fix it, too. Layla agrees to help alleviate the engaged couple’s doubts because it’s the only way she can maintain a good relationship with her former family.

As Layla gets to know Griff better, she discovers the heartbreak from his past that’s motivating him to ensure the bride and groom make it to the altar. In doing so, she’ll also be forced to finally confront the depth of her own pain.

Book Summary

New anchor Jessica needs a summer of healing as she recovers from breast cancer, and her boss offers the use of his late grandmother Mabel’s cottage in the mountains. While she starts off resistant to the slower pace of life in Lost and Found, Kentucky, she soon begins to appreciate the breathtaking sunsets and friendly neighbors.

Over the years, many strangers have mailed mementos and love letters to the town of Lost and Found, and Mabel left behind a map leading to these treasures. Following the map to the precious items is the perfect way for Jessica to pass the time, especially once she begins reuniting the items with the distant strangers they are connected with.

Book Summary

Daisy is a burnt-out NICU nurse moving to a small town, desperate for a simpler life. But on her first day in Cape Carolina, the high school baseball coach, Mason, discovers an abandoned baby.

While Daisy came to town looking for peace, Mason has been searching for a way out. But the baby he has just saved alongside a stranger feels like a reason to stay. He introduces Daisy to her new town and his friends and family, which includes quirky Aunt Tilley. Everyone is beginning to heal when a startling discovery threatens to rip the town apart, with Daisy, Mason, and Tilley in the center of the storm.

Book Summary

Delaney and her boyfriend, Nicholas, are feeling adventurous, so they’ve signed up with a vacation matchmaking company that is going to plan them a romantic getaway – destination unknown. When Delaney arrives on the Isle of Capri, it seems like the making of the perfect holiday. But then a man named Nick, who is not her boyfriend, walks into her hotel suite. Nick is equally confused to find Delaney rather than his fiancée.

After a series of frantic phone calls, Nick and Delaney discover that because the men share a name, there’s been a mix-up. Their partners are together in Iceland, and the hotel in Capri is fully booked, so they can’t even get separate rooms while waiting to clear up the travel confusion.

Capri, with its beautiful scenery and endless Aperol Spritzes, is one of the most romantic places on Earth. So romantic, in fact, that as Nick and Delaney scramble to fix the mix-up, they may find themselves starting to question if the wrong holiday might just be the right one after all.

Book Summary

JoJo has never been great at love, but she’s ready to change her fate. After some self-analysis and pop psychology, she determines that her issues stem from a lack of closure with her first kiss. Since he’s newly divorced and will be at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship, it’s the perfect opportunity for her to set things right.

Since her sister is busy being a bride, she recruits her childhood best friend, Cooper, as her wingman to help her win over her first kiss. She’s still a bit heartbroken that he left the country four years ago without saying goodbye, so their reunion is bittersweet. But as they work together on Project Conquest, old feelings resurface. JoJo starts to wonder if the love she’s been searching for has been right in front of her all along.

Book Summary

For the past three years, Fletcher has been working 70 hours a week as the assistant to a demanding magazine CEO. She’s thrilled when she’s finally offered a spot at Cartwright Media’s annual corporate retreat on their luxurious private island. Rumor has it that her billionaire boss’s safari park island is the place to be if you want a promotion.

Fletcher dreams of moving up from assistant to travel magazine photographer, but the competition turns out to be even more cutthroat than she expected. Her boss turns up dead, and his will reveals that whoever survives the week on the island will inherit the company.

Now she’s surrounded not just by wild animals but also by wild coworkers who have swapped coffee and briefcases for machetes and hunting rifles. Lions, and tigers…and marketing executives. Oh my!

She’ll need an ally to stay alive, and she may have found one in her boss’s gorgeous son, Waylon Cartwright. They have a hostile history, but Fletcher is at least 80 percent sure he won’t try to kill her.

Book Summary

Olivia’s friends are all off enjoying their first year of college, while she stayed home with her family. Her beloved grandmother, Annie, has dementia, and Olivia couldn’t bear the thought of being away from her when Annie needs her the most.

When Annie’s stepmother invites the family to spend three weeks of the upcoming summer on Martha’s Vineyard, Olivia plans to say no, once again feeling it’s more important to be home. But then she discovers a box of photos and memories from Annie’s time on the island, and Olivia decides to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps.

On the island, Olivia meets a boy, Connor – a boy who makes her rethink everything she thought she wanted. How can she plan for her own future when her grandmother’s time is running out?

Book Summary

College professor Jesse and his husband Norman have been together for thirty years when Norman climbs out of bed one night and disappears. Norman walked out into their Joshua Tree backyard, stepped into a strange beam of light, and then he was gone. Where did he go, and will he ever return?

Jesse knows that he and Norman had both been longing for something and feeling stuck, but did Norman feel so stuck that his only option was to leave Jesse behind? Facing the reality that Norman may not return, Jesse questions what his life should look like moving forward. He’s always been one half or a whole, so he’s uncertain how to live alone. Should he return to teaching, put in a pool, or get a dog?

Adding to Jesse’s confusion are his conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and Norman’s sister Lily, who shows up on his doorstep with an urgent request. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.

Book Summary

Running a five-star hotel in Cornwall should be Evie’s dream job, but this particular hotel needs a major restoration. Despite all her grit and determination, Evie is going to need back-up to pull it off.

Enter Abby. She’s been sent by the hotel’s umbrella company to help Evie for the summer, but Abby also has an agenda of her own. Nonetheless, her arrival seems to start a positive chain reaction. With the help of a charming chef and gruff pub owner, they might just be on the right track to restoring the hotel’s reputation.

Evie and Abby have the makings of a beautiful friendship, but all that could melt away when Abby’s real motives are revealed.

Book Summary

Dolly has always been a problem solver who puts everyone else first. She kept the family going when her mom left when she was only twelve, and now, at 39, she’s moved back home to Whitfield, Rhode Island, with her son for the summer to keep her dad and brother from losing the family home.

When she comes across Stewart Whitfield of THE Whitfield family with a flat tire, she’s ready to help. But this interaction turns into a surprising proposal. He’s just been through a very embarrassing public breakup, and now he needs a partner for public dinners and high society benefits. Soon, their meetings include sunset boat rides and quiet talks on the porch swing. But Dolly’s always coped with life by relying only on herself. It was one thing to pretend, but can a woman who’s only ever relied on herself learn to let someone else in?

Book Summary

Fifteen years ago, Lina was a teenager who had her heart broken during a summer at the Jersey Shore. Now, she’s in her sixth year of writing about weddings for a popular website. She was already burnt out on the topic, but her next assignment is the worst one yet. Writing about her high school summer love, Sebastian, is heart-wrenching because she still thinks back to the night that changed everything and how differently her life could have been.

Now, she’s forced to take a more realistic look at her own life, with the help of her best friend, who has been around for it all. 

Book Summary

Sisters Maeve and Therese have always led dramatically different lives, with Maeve a rule-follower and Therese a rebel who left town to pursue an acting career. They’ve been estranged for years, but their mother’s death has brought them back together to settle the estate.

Together, they’ve inherited a painting that comes with family lore. But is it really an original worth millions when the family isn’t otherwise wealthy? Or was it just another tall tale from someone known to exaggerate?

Both Maeve and Therese need the money, so they reluctantly agree to return to the ancestors’ village in Ireland in search of the truth. It soon becomes clear that the town holds many secrets and not everyone is keen for them to be unveiled.

In addition to Maeve and Therese’s POV and contemporary timeline, readers get to see flashbacks to their great-grandmother’s life.

Book Summary

In 1962, the newspaper typing pool offered very few advancement opportunities for women, especially for nice Jewish girls with ambitions beyond finding a husband. But Judy isn’t looking for a husband. She’s an aspiring reporter looking to make her mark in journalism.

When she answers her boss’s private line and hears a cryptic message in a Russian accent, it might be the scoop she needs to prove herself. She finds an ally in Jack, a charming reporter who is willing to follow her instincts. Plus, he can pose as her boyfriend to keep her parents off her back. Together they chase leads through a thrilling underground of secrets and spies stretching from Moscow to Havana to Texas. This story could make her career. Or get her killed.

Book Summary

Sasha is a busy casting agent who knows exactly what she wants, and that wish list does not include a relationship. But on a flight to Paris for work, she finds herself seated next to a broodingly handsome mystery man, and for the first time in a long time, sparks fly. When they part ways without exchanging contact information, Sasha is convinced she’s just let her soulmate walk away.

In a desperate attempt to track him down, she accidentally emails her entire global company. Suddenly, colleagues around the world are joining the hunt for “Seat F,” with a few finding unexpected love of their own along the way. Meanwhile, Sasha takes matters into her own hands and hires a smoldering detective to help track down her mystery man. But as the search unfolds, she may discover that the connection she’s been looking for was never the one she thought she’d lost.

Book Summary

This literary beach read is told from the POVs of multiple women from one wealthy 30-something friend group.

Caroline arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, on a summer writer’s residency after having a short story published in the New Yorker. She quickly falls in love with a local, Van, who has a border-collie personality and a tight-knit friend group who grew up together in the picturesque coastal village.

The group includes Van’s beautiful ex, Bailey, snobby old-money Augusta, and Fran, who is avoiding marriage after first being surrounded by brothers, and now also by sons.

The group spends the long summer days trying to avoid admitting that growing up is inevitable and that big life changes may affect their relationships with one another in unexpected ways.

Book Summary

Joey looks like she has a perfect life on paper. She’s a successful, 32-year-old lawyer in Los Angeles who is about to make partner. But, outside of the office, her main companion is her elderly cat, Ruthie, and most of her nights are spent watching TV.

When she’s invited to a dinner party hosted by her college best friend, she reluctantly agrees to attend. He was her first love, but now he’s married to someone else and she dreads seeing them together in the life she wanted. The dinner goes even worse than she expected, and she can’t wait to get back to the safety of her home with Ruthie.

She makes the life-altering decision to drive home, feeling fine after two glasses of wine, but never makes it. After her death, she’s given the rare opportunity to return to any point in her life to make different choices. Joey chooses to be sent back to 2012, when she was 18 in her first year of college. But every choice she makes has ripple effects.

Book Summary

During the 1970s, amidst the Cold War, twenty-three-year-old Eileen works at a Charleston department store and has no idea how much one customer is about to change her life. Paul is a funny and ambitious naval officer, and Eileen falls for him quickly. Soon, she has a ring on her finger and finds herself on the Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.

The island has a community of Navy wives, all determined to make their temporary space feel like home. But for Eileen, home hasn’t felt the same since she lost her brother in Vietnam, so she takes the opposite approach, diving into Italian culture. But the Americans’ presence on the island and their interference with Italian elections make everything more complex.

Then Italian scientists began sounding the alarm about nuclear contamination in their water. Will Eileen’s loyalties shift as she sees things through the eyes of the locals? 

Book Summary

In coastal areas, summer doesn’t only mean sunny beach days. Hurricane season in Florida is busy for storm-chasing meteorologists like Quincy, who has a PhD in atmospheric science and a successful online weather show in a male-dominated field.

She also has a new job opportunity, but it’s at risk due to the arrival of her professional rival, Sebastian, a flashy NYC TV weatherman, who also happens to be her best friend’s brother. She’s forced into close proximity with him as they chase hurricanes, giving them an unwanted opportunity to see each other in a new light.