Best Beach Reads for Summer

I nominate Mary Kay Andrews as the Official Beach Read author. She comes out with a new title most years and each one is more fun than the last.

Summer Rental was the first MKA pick for the Peanut Blossom Book Club but definitely not the last.

If you're looking for her 2024 pick, don't miss the upcoming Summers at The Saint.

Emily Henry actually has a book called "Beach Read" that is on my TBR pile but I selected her earlier book, People We Meet on Vacation, as an official book club pick in 2023.

This fun travel-themed friends-to-lovers romance is a perfect page flipper for your beach chair lounge time.

When a wedding reception goes Oh So Wrong, the bridesmaid and best man have to take the honeymoon trip together.

Tropical vacation destinations, a budding romance, and laugh out loud comedy of errors? Yes, please.

Summertime wedding mishaps are such a fun theme for a beachside book. By Invitation Only takes place in the South and made an excellent book club book for June.

If you like your romances hotter than the summer sunshine, You Had Me at Hola is the beach read for you.

This spicy Spanish romance takes place on the set of a telenovela and is pure guilty pleasure fun.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of the most popular authors in the Peanut Blossom Book Club. Members discover her once and then follow the wormhole down to read all the rest of the books on her list.

We enjoyed Malibu Rising as a June book club pick and it was a great way to kickstart the summer.

SUMMARY:

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time—she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media—so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.

If you prefer a little history lesson with your tropical island dreaming, The Bungalow was a super-popular book club pick when I first chose it for our group.

The opulent wedding prep described in Crazy Rich Asians is excellent escapist reading at it's best but the love story at the heart of it is sweet and endearing.

Enjoy the book but be sure to watch the fun movie after!

Another fun Mary Kay Andrews pick from our book club, The Weekenders is a very rare instance where an author is featured more than once on our book lists.

While I tend to gravitate towards tropical locations or southern beaches for my summertime reading, A Hundred Summers was a fun getaway to the Rhode Island shore.

This historical fiction novel highlights the 1938 hurricane that pummeled New England.

The first in the Peachtree Bluff series, this fun southern fiction chronicles a family drama with a mom and her three daughters.

SUMMARY:
Caroline Murphy swore she’d never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father’s death, her mother selfishly forced her to move—during her senior year of high school, no less—back to that hick-infested rat trap where she'd spent her childhood summers. But now that her marriage to a New York high society heir has fallen apart in a very public, very embarrassing fashion, a pregnant Caroline decides to escape the gossipmongers with her nine-year-old daughter and head home to her mother, Ansley.

SUMMARY:

Nantucket is only eleven miles away from Martha's Vineyard. But they may as well be worlds apart for estranged twin sisters Harper and Tabitha Frost.

After not speaking for more than a decade, Harper and Tabitha switch islands-and lives-to save what's left of their splintered family.

But the twins quickly discover that the secrets, lies, and gossip they thought they'd outrun can travel between islands just as easily as they can.

Will Harper and Tabitha be able to bury the hatchet and end their sibling rivalry once and for all?

SUMMARY:

In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend.

Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.”

Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard.

And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor.

And Vix knows that she will go—because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer.

And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart.

SUMMARY:

Caretta Rutledge thought she'd left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother—coming just as her own life is spinning out of control—has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers.

Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide "turtle lady" and renews old acquaintances long thought lost.

But it is in reconnecting with her mother that she will learn life's most precious lessons—true love involves sacrifice, family is forever and the mistakes of the past can be forgiven.