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Southern Living’s “25 New Beach Reads For 2025,” published May 16, 2025, is a summer reading list spanning romance, suspense, memoir, family stories, historical fiction, and literary fiction. It is a snapshot of recommendations for summer 2025—not a current 2026 release guide—and it is not ranked. Here’s what each book is about, so you can find a premise that suits your next beach day or armchair escape.
What this 2025 list includes
Southern Living described its picks as new releases gathered by its readers with help from #BookTok ahead of summer 2025. “Beach read” is used here as a seasonal label, not a formal genre: the entries range from light-sounding romance premises to suspense, grief, aging, and Holocaust history. The summaries below reflect the brief descriptions in Southern Living’s original list, not independent reviews or a ranking.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
|
Beach Read | $7.84 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
|
Every Summer After | $10.30 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
|
Summer Island: A Novel | $10.83 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
|
The Summer House: A Novel (A Bestselling Beach Read) | $9.54 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
|
One Golden Summer | $9.98 | Buy on Amazon |
The source included release dates for three books that were forthcoming when it appeared. Those dates are historical 2025 publication notes, not upcoming-release information today. Check a bookseller or publisher for current formats, editions, prices, and stock.
Romance, relationships, and family stories
One Golden Summer — Carley Fortune
A photographer returns to the lake where she spent a teenage summer and reconnects with the man in her iconic photograph.
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Sort Of Seeing Someone — Emily Bond
A palm reader with a viral apothecary brand meets a practical Swedish engineer in a romance Southern Living frames as quirky and magical.
The Love Haters — Katherine Center
A romantic comedy about a woman navigating the fine line between love and hate.
Maine Characters — Hannah Orenstein
Estranged half-sisters spend a summer at their late father’s lake house and confront family secrets.
It’s A Love Story — Annabel Monaghan
A former child actor, now a producer, fakes a connection with a pop star to get a film made—and finds herself in a romance.
Summer On Lilac Island — Lindsay MacMillan
A mother and her daughters navigate dating in a small town while questioning what home means.
Rank #2
Far and Away — Amy Poeppel
Two strangers swap homes, trading Southern food and charm for European life as they consider whether the grass is greener elsewhere.
My Name Is Emilia del Valle — Isabel Allende
A young woman travels to South America to learn about her father and herself.
A Mother’s Love — Danielle Steel
A mother confronting a troubled childhood and an empty nest faces unexpected tests.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsA Family Matter — Claire Lynch
Spanning 40 years, the story follows a couple considering unconditional love and whether old wounds can heal.
Suspense, mysteries, and secrets
The Tenant — Freida McFadden
An unemployed man and his fiancée take in a seemingly kind lodger whose presence reveals a threatening dark side.
Rank #3
With A Vengeance — Riley Sager
Years after her family is killed, a woman lures six people onto a train. A murder disrupts her plan.
Don’t Let Him In — Lisa Jewell
Three women’s lives connect when a mysterious man from their past resurfaces.
The Missing Half — Ashley Flowers
Two women whose sisters disappeared join forces to uncover secrets in a small town.
Not Quite Dead Yet — Holly Jackson
A young woman tries to solve her own murder after a Halloween-night attack. Southern Living listed July 22, 2025, as its debut date.
The Manor of Dreams — Christina Li
Two families vie for the fortune of a deceased Chinese American Hollywood star and confront old secrets.
Rank #4
You Are Fatally Invited — Ande Pliego
A private-island writers’ retreat provides the setting for a murder mystery.
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Atmosphere — Taylor Jenkins Reid
A woman fascinated by the stars applies to NASA’s Space Shuttle program as it begins accepting women candidates in the 1980s.
When The Cranes Fly South — Lisa Ridzén
An older man nearing the end of his life reflects on aging and his relationships while trying to maintain his autonomy. The article gave August 5, 2025, as its release date.
The Girls Who Grew Big — Leila Mottley
Teen mothers face judgment in a small town, build sisterhood, and redefine growing up while raising children.
I Seek A Kind Person — Julian Borger
A memoir about seven children who escaped the Holocaust with help from a British newspaper advertisement.
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Something To Look Forward To — Fannie Flagg
Interconnected stories follow Americans coping with adversity and change. Southern Living said the book would debut in August 2025.
The Poppy Fields — Nikki Erlick
Four strangers visit a grief-treatment center where people sleep through pain, raising questions about the cost of that approach.
The Emperor of Gladness — Ocean Vuong
After a near-death experience, a young man becomes caretaker to an older widow. The article points to themes of love, labor, and American life.
Great Big Beautiful Life — Emily Henry
Southern Living included the title, but its accessible article text did not provide a synopsis.
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One extra suggestion for a beach-at-home escape
Alongside the 25 books, Southern Living pointed readers who could not get to a beach toward Kristen M. Brown’s photography coffee-table book Slice of Pura Vida-dise, described as containing more than 150 images of beaches, sunsets, and surf culture. It is an adjacent visual escape, not one of the 25 numbered reads.
How to use the list
Choose by the kind of premise you want: romance and relationships, family secrets, a murder mystery, or a more reflective story about history, aging, grief, or work. Southern Living did not give the titles a comparative score or rank them. A separate Literary Hub roundup counted books across 35 summer reading lists from 31 publications in 2025; it reported 540 individual books and identified 85 appearing on at least three lists. Those are Literary Hub’s counts for its own roundup, not proof that every Southern Living pick appeared on multiple lists or a measure of the reading market as a whole. See Literary Hub’s 2025 summer-list roundup for that distinct comparison.
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Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
