5 Just-Right Summer Books on This Mom’s Reading List

Creating my list of summer books is one of my favorite end-of-school activities. So what books are on my summer reading list?

Every May, I sit down to make my list of summer books. Some years there are just a few; other years, I have a list longer than I could ever make it through. But, always, my list of books for the summer meets certain criteria. (The rest of the year, I’m not so particular!)

I want books that take me away to a country nothing like my own.
Or to a time I can only imagine.
A book that celebrates friendship + makes me laugh.
I also love a good summer book that’s set in a bakery or bookshop or some other little store.
NOTHING on a current NYT Bestsellers-type list

So what am I reading this summer?

The Last Days of Cafe Leila— This one gets on the list for two reasons. First, the location — Iran is such a beautiful country, and Tehran, in imparticular, is on my list to visit someday. Secondly, a family-run business (close enough to a bookshop) is the center of the story.

From the publisher, “Set against the backdrop of Iran’s rich, turbulent history, this exquisite debut novel is a powerful story of food, family, and a bittersweet homecoming.

Iran may have changed, but Café Leila, still run by Zod, has stayed blessedly the same—it is a refuge of laughter and solace for its makeshift family of staff and regulars.”

The Cake Therapist –First, the cover is gorgeous! Second, I have this thing about flavors and food sensations and what emotions they mean. So a book with a similar idea?? Count me in!

From the publisher, “Neely can “taste” feelings—cinnamon makes you remember; plum is pleased with itself; orange is a wake-up call.

The bakery she opens in her hometown is perfect, intimate, just what she’s always dreamed of—and yet, as she meets her new customers, Neely has a sense of secrets, some dark, some perhaps with tempting possibilities. A recurring flavor of alarming intensity signals to her perfect palate a long-ago story that must be told.”

The Lost History of Stars sounds a little heavy for my usual summer reading. But Africa and the early 1900s? Now that has my ears perked. I’m also a sucker for a great cover.

From the publisher, “In turn-of-the-century South Africa, fourteen-year-old Lettie, her younger brother, and her mother are Dutch Afrikaner settlers who have been taken from their farm by British soldiers and are being held in a concentration camp….Brave and defiant, Lettie finds comfort in memories of stargazing with her grandfather, in her plan to be a writer, and in surprising new friendships that will both nourish and challenge her. A beautiful testament to love, family, and sheer force of will”

A Garden of Small Beginnings — A female lead, humor, a dose of quirkiness, friendship, and gardening. (And, yes, the cover-thing again.)

Lilian Girvan was pushed into the world of single parents after her beloved husband died in a car accident. Through her work as a book illustrator, she ends up taking a class at the Los Angeles botanical gardens. Where, as you can guess, she meets a special someone + a quirky group of new friends.

A story featuring a dead husband + an atypical job request is destined to lead where it leads. But don’t let that predictable setup keep you from opening this book.

The characters feel real. The predictable storyline has its own quirkiness. And it’s funny.

(Adding from 2022: two more books by Abbi Waxman have graced my shelves this summer. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill & Other People’s Houses. Each with its own somewhat familiar storyline but delivered in its own oh, so real way.

Some of the characters in each book are intertwined with the other books without feeling like they’re in a series. Read ’em all.)

As a nearing-50 aged woman who sometimes wonders how she got to where she is, Open Road’s description immediately spoke to me. (I’m also a sucker for national park memoirs! In another life, I’d hop in my Subaru Outback and road trip through the parks alone, just like the commercials.)

From the publisher, “I had a dream to live a “normal” life, and I attained it; but along the way, I lost myself. I sacrificed to get to where I was. Though I didn’t regret anything, flat on my back in the doctor’s office on the cusp of my fiftieth birthday, my health was crumbling.  

I no longer recognized myself.

I turned my head and saw a calendar on the wall: Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah beckoned me with its mysterious sandstone hoodoos. A road trip traveling through the national parks was just what I needed to rediscover the girl I’d been.”

And Three Books I’ve Loved in Summers Past

Next Year in Havana (free with Audible membership) — I love historical fiction & I love a story that spans two eras. Add in another country and this is a PERFECT summer book!

From the publisher, “Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest—until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.”

Circling the Sun — Several summers ago, one of my summer books was West with the Night. This captivating story told about Beryl Markham, the first female pilot to fly west over the Atlantic Ocean. That autobiography lead me to Circling the Sun, this fictionalized version of Markham’s story. (It also lead me to read Out of Africa and watch the 1980s movie of the same name.)

From the publisher, “Brought to Kenya from England by pioneering parents dreaming of a new life on an African farm, Beryl is raised unconventionally, developing a fierce will and a love of all things wild. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl will risk everything to have Denys’s love, but it’s ultimately her own heart she must conquer to embrace her true calling and her destiny: to fly.”

The House at the Edge of Night — A few years back, multigenerational stories were popping up everywhere it seemed. And I loved them! Several of my summer books in During the summers of 2016 – 2018, several of my summer books spanned wide swaths of the 20th century — some set in the US, some around the world. But of all the ones I read, this one most captivated me.

From the publisher, “Spanning nearly a century, through secrets and mysteries, trials and sacrifice, this beautiful and haunting novel follows the lives of the Esposito family and the other islanders who live and love on Castellamare: a cruel count and his bewitching wife, a priest who loves scandal, a prisoner of war turned poet, an outcast girl who becomes a pillar of strength, a wounded English soldier who emerges from the sea. The people of Castellamare are transformed by two world wars and a great recession, by the threat of fascism and their deep bonds of passion and friendship, and by bitter rivalries and the power of forgiveness.”