Every summer, my reading list becomes a reflection of where I am—sometimes emotionally, sometimes geographically, always in flux. This year, my bookshelves looked like a strange cocktail of: Greek mythology, postmodern satire, sweeping historical fiction, heart-stopping romance, and one novel so devastating it took me over a year to finish.
Some books I devoured in a matter of days, others I dragged myself through with stubborn persistence. A few made me laugh out loud; one made me cry in public. Together, they shaped the rhythm of my summer.
In no particular order, here’s the reading journey that left its mark—and why these six books deserve a spot on your TBR.
Circe by Madeline Miller
★★★★★
Madeline Miller takes a footnote of Greek mythology and turns her into one of the most compelling heroines I’ve ever read. In Circe, she reimagines the life of the minor goddess most readers only remember as the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs.
This Circe, however, is far more than a footnote. She’s banished to an isolated island for defying the gods, where she discovers her own power and wrestles with questions of identity, loneliness, and love. Miller paints her as a woman constantly underestimated—by her divine family, by mortal men—and yet she transforms her solitude into strength.
What struck me most was how modern Circe feels. She is the outsider who finds freedom in exile, the woman who learns that survival sometimes means redefining the rules of the game. Miller’s language is lush and poetic without being inaccessible; I often found myself rereading sentences just to savor them.
This is the kind of book you want to highlight, annotate, and gift to a friend who still swears by The Song of Achilles. For readers who crave feminist retellings, lyrical writing, or myth made intimate, Circe is a triumph. I found myself lingering over certain sentences just to let them sink in. More than anything, I loved the way she gave Circe agency in a myth where women are often silenced.
If you loved The Song of Achilles or if you’ve ever wanted mythology told through a feminist lens, this is an absolute must-read.
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
★★★★☆
Emily Henry has become something of a phenomenon in contemporary romance—every summer it feels like her books dominate beach bags and BookTok feeds. With Great Big Beautiful Life, she stretches her wings a little, venturing beyond her typical “two people fall in love in one timeline” structure, to craft a story that unfolds across two timelines.
The novel follows aspiring journalist Alice Scott, who visits a remote island to do a life story interview with recluse heiress Margaret Ives. Alice finds herself in competition with Hayden Anderson, a tough, Pulitzer-winning biographer, to tell Margaret’s story. While a complicated professional competition develops into a developing romance, the two writers compete for Margaret’s favor and find contradictions in the stories she tells them. As a result, they collaborate to uncover the whole truth of the Ives family’s turbulent past.
In Henry’s earlier books (Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers), the narratives are linear—romances that unfold in a single present-day arc. Here, she experiments with structure, weaving together Alice and Hayden’s present-day investigation with fragments of the Ives family’s past. The dual timeline adds intrigue, as each revelation about Margaret challenges the writers’ assumptions and raises the stakes for both their careers and their hearts.
I found this story both familiar and refreshing. It still showcases Henry’s sharp, irresistible banter—her dialogue practically crackles—but it also digs deeper, exploring ambition, trust, and the blurred line between truth and storytelling. At times I wanted the past timeline to hurry along, but by the end I appreciated how its deliberate pacing made the ultimate revelations about the Ives family all the more powerful.
If you’ve loved Henry’s previous novels, this feels like a natural evolution: witty and romantic, but layered with mystery and structural complexity that set it apart. Perfect for readers who like their love stories served with a dose of suspense and a hunt for long-buried truths.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
★★★★☆
This is the book that blindsided me. I picked it up expecting a quiet story about grief and found myself charmed by a giant Pacific octopus. Yes, you read that correctly. And yes, really, he’s wonderful.
The novel follows 70-year-old widow Tova Sullivan, who forms an unexpected friendship with a clever giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus while cleaning the Sowell Bay Aquarium. As Marcellus watches Tova, he uses his keen intelligence to piece together clues about the decades-old disappearance of her son, Erik. Meanwhile, a young man named Cameron arrives in town searching for the father he has never known, uncovering a link between himself, Tova, and Erik. The book explores grief, loss, loneliness, and the surprising connections that can bring healing between species and people.
Marcellus’s chapters are sharp, sardonic, and deeply moving. At times he feels wiser than the humans around him. The human storylines—about loss, connection, and found family—carry the novel’s emotional weight, but Marcellus is its heart.
I kept thinking this would be the perfect book club pick: quirky enough to stand out, moving enough to spark conversation, and ultimately hopeful in a way that feels rare. If you liked Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, you’ll find a similar blend of humor and heart here.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
★★★★☆
Let me be honest: this book nearly broke me. Twice.
This book and I have a complicated relationship. I started it in February 2024, made it 250 pages in, and had to put it down because it was too emotionally heavy. A year later, I tried again, made it to page 450, and—again—stopped. Finally, in May, I forced myself through the remaining 300 pages. It was one of the most grueling reading experiences I’ve ever had—and one of the most rewarding.
A Little Life is one of the most moving, beautifully written novels I’ve ever encountered. A Little Life tells the story of four friends who meet in college and remain bound to one another through adulthood. At the center is Jude, a brilliant lawyer with a past so traumatic it bleeds into every aspect of his life. Yanagihara’s prose is dazzling—sharp, empathetic, devastating. She makes you fall in love with these characters, then tests the limits of your emotional endurance.
Yanagihara’s prose is breathtaking, and her characters are so vividly drawn that they feel like real people. I won’t lie: parts of this book frustrated me. The novel’s flaw, for me, lies in its relentlessness. Toward the end, every possible tragedy seems to befall Jude, (and every other important person in his life,) until the pain feels less like realism and more like narrative cruelty. The relentless suffering endured began to feel excessive toward the end, almost like tragedy piled on for tragedy’s sake. But here’s the thing: even when I was angry at the narrative, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Months later, Jude and his friends still feel alive in my mind.
This isn’t a book you recommend casually. It requires a reader willing to be gutted, to cry, (speaking from experience, possibly, in public,) to feel hopeless and hopeful all at once. For me, it was a four star experience: flawed, yes, but unforgettable. And for all my frustrations, it’s still one of the most powerful novels I’ve ever read. It will stay with you—whether you love it, hate it, or feel both at once. Just know you need to be in the right mindset to take it on.
The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley
★★★★☆
Susanna Kearsley’s novels always feel like a warm escape, and The King’s Messenger was no exception. Blending romance, historical intrigue, and a touch of mystery, the book whisked me into richly atmospheric settings that felt alive with secrets.
This book is part historical fiction, part romance, part mystery. It transports you across centuries, weaving together characters whose lives echo through time. Kearsley’s gift is atmosphere—you can almost feel the mist rolling in across the moors or hear the creak of a centuries-old door.
I loved the dual-timeline structure and the sense of suspense woven through the love story. At times the pacing slowed, but the beauty of Kearsley’s writing made me want to linger.
For fans of Kate Morton or anyone who loves a novel that feels like stepping into another time, this is one to add to your list.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
★★★★★
Every once in a while, a book makes you wonder how it ever ended up on a high school syllabus, not because it isn’t worthy but because it’s almost too strange, too alive, too resistant to being “taught.” Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books.
Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel follows Billy Pilgrim, who becomes “unstuck in time” after surviving the bombing of Dresden in World War II. What unfolds is part science fiction, part war memoir, and part absurdist comedy.
The brilliance is in its disjointedness. The narrative skips around—past, future, aliens, suburbia—in a way that mirrors trauma itself. Vonnegut understood, long before neuroscience studies confirmed it, that memory is nonlinear. The fragmented structure mimics the chaos of memory and PTSD in a way that feels timeless. And yet he tells it all with humor. “So it goes,” he writes after every death. The repetition is both a shrug and a scream. It’s unlike anything else I’ve read.
Reading this in 2025, I was struck by how contemporary it still feels. The satire is biting, the structure feels experimental even now, and the moral clarity—war as absurd, trauma as inevitable—lands as sharply as ever.
This isn’t a book you read to “check off a classic.” It’s a book that unsettles you, entertains you, and leaves you with the unshakable feeling that you’ve glimpsed something true.
If you want a “classic” that won’t feel like assigned reading, this is the one to pick up.
The Final Page
My summer reading didn’t follow a theme so much as a mood: books that challenged me, comforted me, and kept me company. Circe and Slaughterhouse-Five dazzled with their brilliance, A Little Life nearly broke me, and Emily Henry gave me the romantic optimism I needed. Together, they reminded me that books are less about checking titles off a list and more about living alongside stories that shift your perspective.
So, if you’re looking for something new to carry into fall, start here. Just be prepared: you might finish with a broken heart, a fresh perspective, or—if you’re lucky—both.