Everything I Read This Summer: Ranked

Summer may not technically be over yet, but with all three boys back in school it feels like our summer season has come to a close. I may be cutting summer a little short but I was feeling the itch to chat all about books on the blog today so that’s what we’re going to do!

I read a decent number of books this summer, though admittedly less than usual because I was often so darn tired by the time my usual bedtime reading rolled around since our summer was filled with travel, visitors and later-than-usual bedtimes for the boys. Hopefully the fall season will bring a little more reading back into my life, but I still managed to read a handful of books, many of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Below you will find everything I read this summer ranked in order from the books I enjoyed most to the ones I’d probably pass on if you’re looking for your next read. As always you’ll find a mix of genres below — everything from contemporary and historical fiction to mysteries and romance — and I hope something below pops out at you if you’re looking to fill up your library holds list! Happy reading, fellow bookworms!

Everything I Read This Summer: Ranked

• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Genre: Historical Fiction / My rating: A 

The best way I can describe The Calamity Club is to say it’s simultaneously very long and yet not long enough. I love, love, loved it. From start to finish, this book had me absolutley enamored and deeply rooting for both main characters. I spent the first half of the book not really knowing where it was going but also not caring because I adored Meg and Birdie so much. I ended up getting the audiobook version of The Calamity Club through my Libby app halfway through reading it and then went back and forth between the book and the audiobook, as I read before bed at night but listen to audiobooks while multitasking during the day.

For this book, I felt like the audiobook version took my enjoyment of the story to another level. The women reading as Meg and Birdie did such a phenomenal job adding dimension to the character’s voices in a way that had me reading in their voices in my mind when I would switch back to reading this book. This book is officially claiming my top spot for my favorite book of the year so far! It was captivating, thought-provoking, heartbreaking, unexpectedly funny at times and a truly memorable read.

• The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham

Genre: Contemporary Fiction / My rating: A 

I enjoyed the heck out of this book! I was looking for something light and fun for the summer and The Academy nailed it. It was the kind of book that reads like a New England boarding school drama show you cannot help but binge on Netflix. I looked forward to reading it before bed every night and cannot wait to dive into the second book in this mini series once it’s released this fall.

From Amazon: It’s move-in day at Tiffin Academy and amidst the happy chaos of friends reuniting, selfies uploading, and cars unloading, shocking news arrives: America Today just ranked Tiffin the number two boarding school in the country. It’s a seventeen-spot jump—was there a typo? The dorms need to be renovated, their sports teams always come in last place, and let’s just say Tiffin students are known for being more social than academic. On the other hand, the campus is exquisite, class sizes are small, and the dining hall is run by an acclaimed New York chef. And they do have fun—lots of parties and school dances, and a piano man plays in the student lounge every Monday night.

• The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

Genre: Mystery/Romance/Magical Realism / My rating: A-

Having previously read and mostly enjoyed Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young, a few of you encouraged me to read The Unmaking of June Farrow by the same author. I’m glad you nudged me this way because it was such a creative book that read like so much more than your typical love story. It involved time travel in a way that felt fresh and intesresting and an underlying mystery was woven throughout the story that piqued my interest and kept me engaged and excited to flip thorough the pages.

From Amazon: In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.

It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there but June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.

After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

• Here’s to Us by Elin Hilderbrand

Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Romance / My rating: B+

Something about summer has me craving easy, breezy books and Elin Hilderbrand’s novels are the definition of a good beach read. While I’ve liked a handful of her other novels more than this one, if you’re an Elin Hilderbrand fan, you’ll like Here’s to Us, too. It takes place on Nantucket (a shocker to no one if you are an avid Hilderbrand reader) when the three women who were all at one time married to recently deceased celebrity chef Deacon Thorpe come together with their adult children to honor his final wish of saying goodbye to Deacon in the house he loved most. Lots of past and present hurts are unveiled in a way that kept me engaged in this novel from start to finish.

• The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage

Genre: Contemporary Fiction / My rating: B 

I love a novel that centers around royals so this book was immediately intriguing to me. The book begins strong — an estranged princess learns of the tragic passing of her dad and older twin brother — and must make the decision of a lifetime: Whether to return to England and one day become queen or permanently disavow the role and continue living the life she’s made for herself. What follows is a bit of a meandering story that has some strong moments and some lulls but stays interesting enough to want to finish.

From Amazon: It’s New Year’s Day in Australia and the life Lexi Villiers has carefully built is working out nicely: she’s in the second year of her medical residency, she lives on a beautiful farm with her two best friends Finn and Jack, and she’s about to finally become more-than-friendly with Jack—when a helicopter abruptly lands. Out steps her grandmother’s right-hand-man, with the tragic news that her father and older brother have been killed in a skiing accident. Lexi’s grandmother happens to be the Queen of England, and in addition to the shock and grief, Lexi must now accept the reality that she is suddenly next in line for the throne—a role she has publicly disavowed. Returning to London as the heir apparent Princess Alexandrina, Lexi is greeted by a skeptical public not ready to forgive her defection, a grieving sister-in-law harboring an explosive secret, and a scheming uncle determined to claim the throne himself. Her recent life—and Jack—grow ever more distant as she feels the tug of tradition, of love for her grandmother, and of obligation. When her grandmother grants her one year to decide, Lexi must choose her own destiny: will it be determined by an accident of birth—or by love?

• The Love Haters by Katherine Center

Genre: Romance / My rating: B

There was a lot I liked about this book — a peek into the job of a rescue swimmer in the United States Coast Guard (probably my favorite part of the book), “The Gals” (a group of retirees who live in a cottage compound of sorts in Key West), and the easy-to-read, breezy nature of the book (exactly what I was looking for after reading Yesteryear — yeesh). The Love Haters wasn’t the best romance book I’ve read but it was a fun, lighthearted escape novel I enjoyed.

It follows Katie, a woman on a very reluctant journey to self love, who finds herself on assignment for work to film a promo video for the Coast Guard. The tricky part? She doesn’t know how to swim and assured her boss she does because she needs this assignment to keep her job. Oh and the rescue swimmer she’ll be filming? Hutch is her coworker’s incredibly good looking older brother who has no idea she can’t swim.

• Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

Genre: Mystery / My rating: B-

I oscillated from enjoying this book to being annoyed by this book. As someone who reads a lot of suspense and mystery novels, a lot of the joy I get from reading mysteries is trying to solve them. I’m no stranger to an unreliable narrator but the narrator in Beautiful Ugly felt like a different kind of unreliable for a myriad of reasons. (I don’t want to go into all of them because I don’t want to spoil anything but his unreliability felt redundant and frustrating after a while.) I was invested enough in the book and intrigued enough to continue wondering how the heck it was all going to unfold but it wasn’t a must-read mystery novel for me by any means, especially when I stack it against some of Alice Feeney’s other books which I enjoyed much more.

From Amazon: Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life. Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared. A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

• Nantucket Nights by Elin Hilderbrand

Genre: Contemporary Fiction / My rating: C+

I am no stranger to Elin Hilderbrand books (as you may have noticed above) and certainly gravitate toward her beachy reads more in the summer months. Nantucket Nights was my third Elin Hilderbrand novel of the season and fell a bit flat for me, especially when I compare it to some of her other novels that have thoroghly entertained me. I didn’t really care about any of the characters (nor did I really even like them) and the whole plotline was a little boring and not overly intriguing… not to mention unsatisfying in the end. I finished this one but honestly could’ve walked away from it anytime and never really thought about it again. It’s not a book I’d recommend, especially when there are tons of other Elin Hilderbrand books out there that I’ve thoroughly loved!

From Amazon: For 20 years, Kayla, Antoinette and Val have performed their own special summer ritual. Once a year, the old friends put aside their daily, separate lives to drink champagne, swap stories and swim naked under the Nantucket stars. But on one of those bonding nights, one of their trio swims out from the shore and doesn’t return.

After the surviving friends emerge from their grief, they realize that the repercussions of their loss go far beyond their little circle, and they begin to uncover layers of secrets–and their connections to each other–that were never revealed on the beach. What has made their friendship strong now has the power to destroy–their marriages, families and even themselves.

Past Book Recommendations

• Best Books I Read in 2025 (So many fantastic reads on this list!!!)
• Everything I Read This Summer (September 2025)
• Top 10 Books of 2024 (December 2024)
• Everything I Read This Summer (September 2024)
• Best Books I’ve Read So Far This Year (April 2024)
• Favorite Books of 2023 (January 2024) 
• Books I’ve Recently Read and Loved (October 2023) 
• All the Books I’ve Read So Far In 2023 (March 2023)
• Thriller Audiobook Recommendations (December 2022)
• 15 Best Books I’ve Read So Far This Year (August 2022) 
• 15 Beach Reads for Summer (May 2022)
• Book Recommendations by Category (December 2021)
• 10 Books I Recently Read and Loved (July 2021)
• 10 Books I Recently Read and Loved (November 2020)
• 10 Books I Recently Read and Loved (June 2020)
• 15 Books I Recently Read and Loved (February 2020)
• 12 Books I Recently Read and Loved (September 2020)
• 10 Books I Recently Read and Loved (February 2019)

QUESTION OF THE DAY

Tell me about the books you’ve read this summer! Any favorites? Any must-reads?