Summer Reading List 2025: part the first
30 books worth packing
If you are anything like me, you want your summer reading to pay its way, especially if you pack actual books, which I do because I am retro like that. To hold a book is part of the experience, and when you open it months - perhaps years - later, it holds ghosts of summers past. So there is no space for duds; I even cast an eye over my family’s books to ensure I have pack-up material. Fortunately, I have selflessly done the research for you, very loosely categorised so you can (I hope) find what your heart desires.
Funny ha-ha (and possibly peculiar)
Fundamentally - Nussaibah Younis
Wait, what? A funny novel about ISIS brides, deradicalisation, Islam, and the UN? Yep. As you do. Heartbrokn academic Nadia accepts a job with the UN to lead a rehabilitation programme for Isis women in Iraq, only to find herself stymied by corruption, backhanders, and labyrinthine bureaucracy. Yet when she meets Sara - a young, precocious, mouthy Londoner, Nadia is so reminded of herself, she becomes obsessed with helping the girl. But at what cost?
Havoc - Rebecca Wait
I adored Wait’s debut, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, so hurrah for her new novel. Fleeing her family’s disgrace in Scotland, Ida accepts a place at a boarding school on the south coast of England. When she arrives, she finds it gently decaying and peopled by an eccentric cast of characters - not least the headmistress, ever-vigilant for a stray nuclear bomb, and her room-mate, Louisa, potential arsonist and psychopath. Then a mysterious sickness starts spreading through the school, causing the girls’ limbs to jerk uncontrollably… It’s a wonderfully droll English tragicomedy, with darkness and bite.
Happiness Forever - Adelaide Faith
Sylvie is a veterinary nurse living in an English seaside town with her brain-damaged dog Curtains. She is madly in love with her coolly elegant therapist, and spends her days longing for the next session or thinking of ways to encourage her therapist to embrace her. The most original book I have read in a long while, it is peculiarly charming, unexpectedly funny with sweetness at its core (but not in a mawkish way).
Literary Love Stories
For the full list (there are many more AND a part 2 where these came from), subscribe now!