Dive into Summer: Twenty Fun and Steamy Beach Reads for 2024
Hey there, fellow book lovers! Summer is almost here, and it’s time to kick back, relax, and dive into some delightful reads. Whether you’re lounging on the sand, chilling by the pool, or just soaking up the sun in your backyard, I’ve got a list of five fantastic beach reads that will make your summer extra special. These contemporary romance novels, historical romances and romantic comedies, are all set against the charming backdrop of the beach or hot and sunny travel destinations and have been written in the last few years. Let’s get into it!
Twenty Fun And Easy Beach Reads for A Steamy Summer
Christina Lauren, returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance.
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.
Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.
Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.
But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.
Benefits of a summer romance: it’s always fun, always brief, and no one gets their heart broken.
There aren’t enough labeled glass containers to contain the mess that is Ali Morris’s life. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. She’s a professional organizer whose pantry is a disgrace.
No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her in the same way he claimed his favorite of her three children: by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees. The last thing Ali needs is to make her life messier, but there’s no harm in a little Summer Romance. Is there?
Lifelong best friends spend a fateful summer discovering what might happen if they were to be something more in this radiant, heart-clenching adult debut.
Laniah Thompson is a homebody who craves privacy. Issac Jordan is internet famous and spends his days followed by paparazzi. She runs a small business with her mom in her hometown. He runs an international brand.
And they’ve been best friends since childhood.
When Issac comes home to Providence for the first time in months and discovers Laniah’s dream is slipping out of reach as she and her mom struggle to pay the bills at Wildly Green, their natural hair store, she refuses to take a dime from him. And so, he does what any self-respecting best friend would do: tells the world they’re dating.
Suddenly business is booming, and Laniah agrees to his ridiculous plan to pretend to be lovers for the course of the summer. Just long enough to catch the eye of an investor and get her dream back on track, like she helped him do so many years ago, he reminds her.
Too soon, though, Laniah knows she’s playing with fire, because for as long as they’ve been friends there’s an undeniable pull they’ve never given in to. And as the lines between art and life—real and pretend—blur, it becomes harder and harder to see where friendship ends and something else begins….
Told over the course of three sizzling summer months, A Love Like the Sun is about shared history, those who make us our bravest selves, and love in its many forms.
A young magazine writer in Mumbai must prove her matchmaking skills—and contend with growing feelings for her close family friend—in this debut desi romance.
Confident fashionista Jia Deshpande spends her days writing cliché-ridden listicles for Mimosa, Mumbai’s top women’s magazine. When she can, Jia dishes about the messy truth of real love on her anonymous blog, attends her family’s weekly game nights, and ignores her true feelings for her childhood friend. If that wasn’t enough, Jia needs to successfully set up a coworker with her perfect match to get the green light for her new matchmaking column. Thankfully, organizing meet-cutes has never been difficult for her.
Local pub owner and cocktail genius Jaiman Patil can’t help but be enamored with Jia and her meddling spirit. He’s always been an honorary part of her family, but even more so since his own moved to America. Life with the Deshpandes is chaotic and loud, but it’s also more loving than anything he experienced growing up, and he wouldn’t risk losing that for the world. It feels manageable—until his pub begins to struggle and his long-hidden feelings for Jia grow deeper.
When Jia’s attempts at office matchmaking go haywire, risking new friendships and her relationship with Jaiman, she must reevaluate her own thoughts on love. For the first time, Jia Deshpande realizes that love may be a lot more complicated than she thought. Luckily, happily-ever-afters are never in short supply in Mumbai.
After ten years as a flight attendant, Ava Greene is poised to hang up her wings and finally put down roots. She’s got one trip left before she bids her old life farewell, and she plans to enjoy every second of it. But then she discovers that former pilot Jack Stone — the absurdly gorgeous, ridiculously cocky man she’s held a secret grudge against for years — is on her flight. And he has the nerve to flirt with her, as if he doesn’t remember the role he played in the most humiliating night of her life. Good thing she never has to see him again after they land….
But when their plane encounters mechanical problems, what should have been a quick stop at the Belize airport suddenly becomes a weekend layover. Getting stuck on a three-hour flight with her nemesis was bad enough. Being stranded with him at a luxury resort in paradise? Even with the sultry breeze and white sand to distract her, it will take all the rum punch in the country to drown out his larger-than-life presence.
Yet the more time Ava spends with him under the hot Caribbean sun, the more she begins to second-guess everything she thought she knew about him… and everything she thought she wanted from her life. And all too soon, she might have to choose between keeping her feet on the ground and her head in the clouds….
An unexpected tropical layover with her nemesis turns a flight attendant’s life upside down in this witty, breezy debut romantic comedy about life — and love — 30,000 feet above the ground.
A delightful queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside — from the author of The Duke Undone.
Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn’t fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn’t realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?
Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn’t accept Muriel’s offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won’t agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that’s exactly the challenge he needs.
As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season’s end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they’re willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.
In this steamy Regency romp, Lady Selina is determined to find the Duke of Stanhope the perfect wife―the only problem is she’s starting to think that might be her.
Peter Kent―newly inherited Duke of Stanhope and recently of New Orleans, Louisiana―must become respectable. Between his radical politics and the time he interrupted a minor royal wedding with a flock of sheep―not his fault!―he’s developed a scandalous reputation at odds with his goal of becoming guardian to his half siblings. For help, he turns to the cleverest and most managing woman of his acquaintance, Lady Selina Ravenscroft.
Selina is society’s most proper debutante, save one tiny secret: she runs an erotic circulating library for women. When Peter asks for her help, she suggests courtship and marriage to a lady of unimpeachable reputation. (Which is to say, definitely not herself.)
But matchmaking doesn’t go according to plan. Peter’s siblings run rampant on Bond Street. Selina ends up in the Serpentine. And worst of all, the scorching chemistry between Peter and Selina proves impossible to resist. For the disreputable duke and his unpredictable matchmaker, falling in love just might be the ultimate scandal.
This summer they’ll keep their promise. This summer they won’t give into temptation. This summer will be different.
Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.
It’s easier said than done.
Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.
If Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.
When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.
From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst comes a new women’s fiction novel featuring three generations of Ferrari women who need to heal the broken pieces of their lives…and one trip of a lifetime through Italy.
Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother’s wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. What she never expected was to be faced with the choice of a lifetime. . . .
Allegra wants to make her grandmother happy, but she hates the idea of forced time with her mother and vows to fight every step of the ridiculous tour, until a young man on the verge of priesthood begins to show her the power of acceptance, healing, and the heartbreaking complications of love.
Sophia knows her girls are in trouble. A summer filled with the possibility for change is what they all desperately need. Among the ruins of ancient Rome, the small churches of Assisi, and the rolling hills of Tuscany, Sophia hopes to show her girls that the bonds of family are everything, and to remind them that they can always lean on one another, before it’s too late.
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work.
Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
It’s supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected–including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
A messy family drama and a steamy little romance unfold under the Mediterranean sun for the perfect summer escape…
Celebrated romance author Catherine Swift has topped the bestseller lists for decades, though her personal story hasn’t been quite so successful. Three failed marriages have left her relationship with her daughters strained, but that’s about to be rectified. Engaged yet again, Catherine is counting on this wedding to be what finally brings them together as a family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Adeline doesn’t know what’s worse—that her mother is getting married a fourth time, or that she’s being guilted into witnessing the train wreck at Catherine’s luxury villa in Corfu. It brings back the pain of her parents’ split, of her mother’s infidelity and the baby that was the result. Not that she blames her half sister, Cassie, but then she’s never made an effort to know her, either.
Cassie, on the other hand, is thrilled by her mother’s news and admires Catherine’s resilience. She’s equally excited about meeting the mystery groom, and at the prospect of spending her summer in Corfu, where she can process a secret of her own she’s been keeping from everyone.
As Cassie and Adeline arrive on the island, they each have very different expectations of what this week will bring—they haven’t been entirely honest with their mother about their lives, either—but in the lead-up to the wedding, all will be revealed, for better or worse.
When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family’s summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.
T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He’s almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn’t bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family—and a stack of overdue assignments—instead of his friends.
Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.’s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.
Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.
Joy is in love with Malcolm.
But Malcolm really likes Summer.
Summer is in love with love.
And Fox is Summer’s ex-boyfriend.
Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he’s met the love of his life—and no, it’s not Joy—she’s heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?
They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.
Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.
For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.
When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.
Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right.
An Angsty, Single Parent Romance
CALEB
I came to the lake to be left alone, to lick my wounds. I wasn’t counting on neighbors and I especially wasn’t counting on her.
Lucie was a little kid the last time I was here. Now she’s grown—and God, did she ever grow up—with two little kids of her own.
She’s everywhere I look, no matter how hard I try to avoid her. I’d forgotten all the things I used to want, used to dream about. She’s reminding me…and making me want every last one of them again.
LUCIE
From the moment I first saw Caleb when I was six, I knew he belonged to me. And I knew I’d have to save him—because how else does the girl nobody wants win over the boy beloved by all?
Nothing about his life or mine has gone to plan. He’s isolated and miserable. I’ve got a vindictive ex and more problems than I can count.
But what hasn’t changed is this: it still feels like he’s mine.
And I still think I may need to save him.
Journalist Margaret loves her job, writing important stories about the impact of government decisions on day-to-day lives for a respected newspaper in Johannesburg. There’s only one her co-worker, Jagger Villain. Is that even his real name? she often wonders. Jagger spends his days writing fluff pieces on everything from the worst-rated barber in Johannesburg to speed dating to male sex toys. To make matters worse, they share a cubicle and a desk, and every day he finds new ways to drive her to distraction. She needs a vacation!
Thankfully the upcoming company quiz night has the perfect first a deluxe trip to a resort in Zanzibar. It will be the perfect escape for Margaret and her mother after a difficult year dealing with the death of her father and divorce. Margaret’s never met a quiz night she can’t win, but then she’s never competed against Jagger. That’s when the unthinkable happens. They tie. They both win. They both get to go to Zanzibar.
It’s bad enough that Margaret has to be on the same island as Jagger, but at least she has her widowed mother with her to help her avoid her co-worker and whoever he brings. However, Jagger’s plus one isn’t what she expected. It’s not some girl of the moment, it’s his father, which shakes up her opinion of him . . . at least a bit. And that’s when the entire situation goes from farce to horror their parents fall in love and decide to get married.
Suddenly Margaret and Jagger go from co-workers who dislike each other (but also ‘accidentally’ had sex one night,) to step siblings who dislike each other (but also ‘accidentally’ had sex one night!). But maybe they don’t dislike each other as much as they initially thought they did?
The ultimate summer nostalgia read, about an engaged woman who comes face to face with her first love who she hasn’t seen in fourteen years, but who she spent every summer with from age five to seventeen when he broke her heart, calling into question everything she thought she knew about their love story, and herself.
Beach Rules:
Do take long walks on the sand.
Do put an umbrella in every cocktail.
Do NOT run into your first love.
Sam’s life is on track. She has the perfect doctor fiancé, Jack (his strict routines are a good thing, really), a great job in Manhattan (unless they fire her), and is about to tour a wedding venue near her family’s Long Island beach house. Everything should go to plan, yet the minute she arrives, Sam senses something is off. Wyatt is here. Her Wyatt. But there’s no reason for a thirty-year-old engaged woman to feel panicked around the guy who broke her heart when she was seventeen. Right?
Yet being back at this beach, hearing notes from Wyatt’s guitar float across the night air from next door as if no time has passed—Sam’s memories come flooding back: the feel of Wyatt’s skin on hers, their nights in the treehouse, and the truth behind their split. Sam remembers who she used to be, and as Wyatt reenters her life their connection is as undeniable as it always was. She will have to make a choice.
One bump. Two strangers. Three days to fall in love.
Tessie Truelove has spent her entire life avoiding. . .well, true love. And why wouldn’t she? Her dog ran off, her father left to go get cigarettes and never came back, and her mother passed away years ago. Instead, Tessie, a celebrity interior designer, clings to her to-do lists and her Pantone colors and her toxic job to avoid more heartbreak. But after too much whiskey and a wild night with a rugged stranger has her seeing two little pink lines, she vows to do motherhood all by herself. After all, it might be her one shot at true love. Nothing will interrupt her plans. Not even Solomon Wilder—her muscled, bearded, brooding baby daddy—who stomps his way into her perfectly planned babymoon after learning about her pregnancy.
Stuck together in paradise, the two strike a spend three days together to figure out how to raise their son. Complete opposites, they have nothing in common except the bump between them. Tessie has her glamorous career in LA, and Solomon has his wild life in Alaska. Yet as the babymoon takes a turn for the steamy and Solomon breaks through the emotional walls Tessie’s spent years guarding, she starts to wonder if she and this gruff, flannel-wearing mountain man might be meant to do more than just share a baby—they might be meant to share a heart.
Two stranded strangers agree to travel together in order to return home, but when a slew of misadventures derail their plans, it might mean a chance to fall in love . . .
A steamy, opposites attract romance, ideal for fans of Emily Henry, Beth O’Leary and Christina Lauren.
You don’t really know a guy until you’ve vacationed with him…
When Drew Wilson’s ex-boyfriend Joel “Six” Bailey asks her to go on his family trip to Hawaii with him just as her life is falling apart, she decides it’s the perfect time to give him another chance.
The hitch? The Bailey family includes Six’s rude older brother, Joshua—a hot-nerd doctor who has hated Drew since the moment they met and once suggested she’d steal the family silver.
Drew is determined to win the Baileys over and give this thing with Six a fair shot…but Joshua is making that difficult. Not simply because he is in her way at every turn, but because—as one tropical adventure leads to the next—she’s beginning to wonder if obnoxious, odious Joshua might be the brother she actually belongs with.
After ten years as a flight attendant, Ava Greene is poised to hang up her wings and finally put down roots. She’s got one trip left before she bids her old life farewell, and she plans to enjoy every second of it. But then she discovers that former pilot Jack Stone — the absurdly gorgeous, ridiculously cocky man she’s held a secret grudge against for years — is on her flight. And he has the nerve to flirt with her, as if he doesn’t remember the role he played in the most humiliating night of her life. Good thing she never has to see him again after they land….
But when their plane encounters mechanical problems, what should have been a quick stop at the Belize airport suddenly becomes a weekend layover. Getting stuck on a three-hour flight with her nemesis was bad enough. Being stranded with him at a luxury resort in paradise? Even with the sultry breeze and white sand to distract her, it will take all the rum punch in the country to drown out his larger-than-life presence.
Yet the more time Ava spends with him under the hot Caribbean sun, the more she begins to second-guess everything she thought she knew about him… and everything she thought she wanted from her life. And all too soon, she might have to choose between keeping her feet on the ground and her head in the clouds….
An unexpected tropical layover with her nemesis turns a flight attendant’s life upside down in this witty, breezy debut romantic comedy about life — and love — 30,000 feet above the ground.
“The Summer Job” by Lizzy Dent is a fresh and funny romantic comedy that you’ll devour in no time. When Birdy Finch impulsively decides to take over her best friend’s summer job at a highland Scottish hotel, chaos and hilarity ensue. Birdy’s misadventures in the world of hospitality, paired with a blossoming romance with a charming chef, make this book a delightful and lighthearted read that’s perfect for the beach.
So, there you have it—five fun and easy beach reads to enjoy this summer. Each of these books offers a unique blend of romance, humour, and the irresistible charm of the beach. Grab your sunglasses, a cozy beach chair, and one of these delightful reads to make your summer truly unforgettable. Happy reading, and may your summer be filled with endless sunshine and great stories!
Here’s some reviews of some more Beach Reads I’ve done: Beach Read by Emily Henry and One Hot Italian Summer by Karina Halle. Take a look at more books being published in June!