Want to Expand Your Summer Reading List? Look No Further!

We don’t know about you, but one of our favorite parts of summer break is finally having the time to sit down with a good book. But with so many books and so little time, we often struggle with deciding where to start—which is why we’ve put this list of good summer reads written by diverse authors. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a start!

Female Voices

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

If you like a good, hard-to-solve mystery, this book is for you. When Libby Jones turns 25, she inherits an abandoned mansion left to her by her deceased birth parents. What she doesn’t know is that 25 years ago, police arrived at the mansion and found three dead bodies in the kitchen and a baby upstairs crying. The Family Upstairs follows Libby as she unravels the secrets of her parents’ death, keeping you guessing until the very last page. Honestly, it’s impossible to put this book down.

Dress Coded – Carrie Firestone

Okay, so this one is technically a read for middle-schoolers. But the message—and the writing itself—is just too good. Plus, we’ve all definitely experienced being dress-coded, body shamed, or judged on an outfit before. After her friend gets in trouble at school for wearing a tank top, Molly Frost decides to start a podcast where girls around the school can share their dress-code stories. Before long, the girls are standing up for themselves and a revolution is born.

Black Voices

Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid

You probably recognize this title because it was highly popular last summer too. Nonetheless, it’s a great read and an important story. One night, Emira Tucker is browsing a high-end grocery store with Briar, the toddler she babysits, when the store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses her of kidnapping Briar. Alix Chamberlain, the child’s mother, is shocked and determined to help Emira. Such a Fun Age has been described as “a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege” and is still a great pick for this summer.

The Other Black Girl – Zakiya Dalila Harris

A book set in a publishing house, this novel has been described as The Devil Wears Prada meets Get Out and also explores both privilege and racism. Editorial assistant Nella Rogers is the only Black employee at Wagner Books, until Hazel comes along. Though she’s thrilled, Nella begins to start receiving hostile notes on her desk and begins to spiral about who could be behind them. The Other Black Girl offers important commentary on workplace harassment while being a thrilling page-turner.

LGBTQ+ Voices

One Last Stop – Casey McQuiston

If you’re in search of the perfect rom com read this summer, then look no further. August is a cynical 23-year-old who just moved to New York City. She doesn’t believe in true love and she prefers to be on her own—that is, until she meets Jane, who looks like she came from the 1970s. But there’s one big problem—Jane literally came from the 1970s and now August is determined to help her. According to the book’s synopsis, “Carey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible.”

Honey Girl – Morgan Rogers

Grace Porter is about as predictable as they come—until she goes on a girls’ trip to Las Vegas and drunkenly gets married to a woman whose name she doesn’t even know. She decides to embrace the unknown for a summer in New York with her new wife, where she begins to actually fall for her. This is a story about our deepest human fears, a longing for connection and the attempt to navigate the difficulties of adulthood, which many of us can relate to.

AAPI Voices

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir – Michelle Zauner

This book is a bit different from the rest on this list because it’s a memoir, but it’s place is well-deserved. Crying in H Mart expands on the author’s viral New Yorker essay from 2018 and is a powerful story about Zauner’s Korean American heritage, the loss of her mother and finding herself.

Arsenic and Adobo – Mia P. Manansala

This one combines food, mystery and comedy—seriously, what more could we ask for? And it’s worth noting, the author’s bio states she “is a writer from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women,” so we automatically want it on our to-be-read piles. After moving back home to nurse a broken heart, Lila Macapagal finds herself being enlisted to save her Tita Rosie’s restaurant. But things go south when a food critic (and Lila’s ex-boyfriend) dies just moments after an encounter with Lila. Suddenly, she’s being treated as the only suspect in the case and her life “quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case,” says the synopsis.

We do not own any of the images in this article.

Featured image by Brittney Weng on Unsplash.