The Season that Tells a Story: My Favourite Summer Novels

Sixteen novels that capture the heat, wonder, and liminal ache of summer

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The past week has brought a sharp and sudden heatwave—unseasonal even for June—and with it, the usual swell of headlines about climate crisis, global unrest, and mounting tragedy: the massacre in a Lebanese church, the escalation in Iran, and so many other stories adding to the already unbearable weight.

Between the rising heat of both the temperature and the news, I find myself struggling to take it all in. Maybe you are too.

And so, whether out of escape or a need to cling to beauty in a burning world, I’ve been reading—and thinking about reading—a lot.

Reading in the summer feels different. And I don’t just mean because of the heat.

I’ve been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. And while I’m sure I have reading memories from every season, the ones that stand out most vividly are from summer: hours spent at the library, basking in air-conditioned, breathing in the scent of dusty pages.

The old Southside Library Branch (now closed) in my hometown, where I spent endless summer days paging through RL Stine’s Goosebumps series and basking in air-conditioned passageways.

But I think it goes deeper than air conditioning or free time. Summer itself feels like a threshold. It’s liminal—a space between things: between school years, relationships, jobs, selves. Growing up, it summer it seemed I was in two grades at once—the one I’d finished, and the one waiting for me in September. It holds memory and possibility in equal measure.

It has a clearer beginning and end in the cultural imagination than other seasons—June to August, school’s end to school’s recommencement. A story contained within that frame feels satisfying. We’ve all had a summer that changed us. Summer stories echo that. The summer coming-of-age novel is a plot device that (almost) never gets old.

And then there’s the expansiveness. The long days, the slow evenings. The sense that there’s time to linger, to breathe, to sprawl out—on a beach, a porch, a lawn chair, or deep within the pages of a novel that doesn’t rush to get anywhere. Personally, I tend more towards sprawling novels and family sagas in summer than any other time of year.

I distinctly remember reading Anna Karenina for the first time in the summer of 2007, sweating late into the night in a fanless room of a campus house. It’s such a visceral connection I almost start sweating when I take that novel off my shelf.

All this to say: I love summer novels. And I love summer reading.

So today I’m sharing 16 of my all-time favourites—novels that take place in summer, or evoke its beauty, ache, and fullness. These aren’t spiritual reads (that might come in a follow-up post), just books I love returning to this time of year.

My Top 5 Summer Novels

As Close to Us as Breathing, by Elizabeth Poliner:
I was stunned when I realized…

In the summer of 1948, three Jewish sisters and their families gather at their Connecticut beach cottage, where long days of freedom give way to buried tensions, secret love, and a tragic accident that alters their lives forever. Told decades later by a now-grown niece who witnessed it all, As Close to Us as Breathing is a quietly powerful story of grief, guilt, and the tangled loyalties of family. This novel left me speechless—not just for the tragedy at its heart, but for its haunting prose and vivid portrayal of a nearly forgotten corner of mid-century America. The texture of the story felt so real, I was stunned to realize it wasn’t based on a true story.

In the Place of Fallen Leaves, by Tim Pears:
I re-read this book every summer

Set during the long, sweltering summer of 1984, this tremulous coming-of-age novel unfolds in a remote English village through the eyes of 13-year-old Allison, the youngest in a farming family. As it stretches on, the summer drought brings the quiet dramas of village life to the surface—old superstitions, the pace of change, mortality, the residue of class tension, and Allison’s unlikely friendship with her father, whose mind was left childlike after alcohol poisoning. What keeps me returning to this book each summer (not exaggerating) is Pears’ skillful prose, his almost mouthwatering sense of place, and the way he teases beauty from the stagnant stillness of drought.

Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger:
The most suspenseful non-suspenseful novel ever

What we know from the dust-jacket description is that in this small-town coming-of-age novel, set over the course of a single summer in 1961, thirteen-year-old Frank Drum will be visited by four different deaths in his family and community—an accident, a natural death, a suicide, and a murder. What we don’t know is who will die, or when, or in what order they will occur. Blending the heart of literary fiction with the suspense of a thriller, it's one of my favourite books I’ve read in the past year and perfect for summer reading.

The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson:
Short, sweet, and a hidden pearl of European lit

On a tiny, rocky island (or “skerry”) in the Gulf of Finland, an elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter spend a summer learning to live with each other’s fears, eccentricities, and independent natures. Through small rituals, pastimes, and discoveries, the love they find embraces not only each other but the island itself, with its mossy rocks, austere soil, windswept firs, and unpredictable seas. First published in 1972, I only recently read The Summer Book for the first time and I can see why many regard it as a hidden pearl of European literature—it is beautifully simple, and simple in its beauty.

Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbit:
Possibly my favourite first line ever

A timeless children’s novel about a young girl who discovers a spring that grants eternal life, and the family who has been living with its consequences for generations. As protagonist Winnie Foster weighs whether to embrace immortality or return to her ordinary life, the story unfolds into a gentle, profound meditation on time, death, and what makes life worth living.

I’ll be honest—I’m not a big fan of fantastical elements, but the themes of this children’s classic are deeply human and enduring. What really pulled me into this book, though, were its rich descriptions of summer (much of the story takes place in August), including one of my favourite opening lines in all of literature:

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”

―Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

11 More Summer Favourites

• Beat the Turtle Drum, Constance C. Greene — Did anyone else read this heartbreaking novel growing up? For my pre-teen self, it was right up there with Bridge to Terabithia in terms of literary introductions to gut-wrenching loss. It takes place over the course of a single summer, in which two sisters save up to buy a horse.

  

• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath — Esther Greenwood’s promising life begins to unravel as she descends into mental illness in this unforgettable American classic. Set partly amid the heat and glamour of a 1950s New York summer internship, Sylvia Plath renders Esther’s breakdown with such clarity that it feels disturbingly rational and intimate. A painful reminder that even bright days can mask deep shadows.

• Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh — A meditation on “youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea” (dust-jacket description). Set against the backdrop of sun and sea, this book has been nourishing the minds and hearts of women creatives since it was first published in 1955. (Just remembered this is a post about novels, and this is technically not fiction—sorry/not sorry!)
  

• A Handful of Time, Kit Pearson — 12-year-old Patricia spends the summer with her cousins at a lakeside cottage in Alberta, feeling awkward and out of place—until she winds an old watch and is transported back in time (oops). There, she meets her mother as a girl and discovers long-buried family secrets. With its not-too-sci-fi time travel elements and vivid natural setting, the novel captures the magic and melancholy of summer and growing up. Sometimes you just need to nurture your inner preteen cottagecore self.
  

  

  
  

• The Driest Season, Meghan Kenny — Another summer coming-of-age novel, this one set in rural Wisconsin. Sixteen-year-old Cielle wrestles with the suicide of her father, the shame of secrecy, and the promise of hope—all against the backdrop of the second world war.
  
  

  

• A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr — Have you ever cried after finishing a book because you knew you would never again have the delicious experience of reading it for the first time? This was one of those books for me. It is a balm to my soul every time I read it.
  
  

  

• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver — In 1959, fiery Baptist preacher Nathan Price brings his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo to save souls, but their mission sows tragedy as they collide with a culture vastly more complex than they imagined. Not a summer novel per se, but its shifting settings—between the heat of Central Africa and the sultry stillness of the American South—not to mention the fire-and-brimstone plot pair perfectly with the physical and spiritual languishing that can permeate summer in North America.

• Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro — A butler’s rare vacation gives him a taste of the losses and regrets he otherwise keeps silent. Set in the summer of 1956.
  
  

  

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith — Summer is the perfect time to dive into this lovely classic, which opens in the sweltering summer of 1912 as young Francie Nolan watches the "tree of heaven" grow in her Brooklyn neighbourhood—an image that sets the tone for this rich, coming-of-age story and pairs perfectly for anyone stuck in a city during summer.

• The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides — I don’t know why I enjoy this unnerving guilty pleasure of a cult classic, but here we are! Eugenides is a master at capturing mystery and making you incapable of looking away. Beginning in the month of June, the story spans a year, from one summer until the following.
  

• A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle — All seasons make an appearance in this memoir classic, but the grueling beauty of summer is particularly evocative as Mayle and his wife take up residence in a 200-year-old farmhouse in the South of France.

What are your favourite summer reads? What do you love about reading in the summer? I’d love to hear about it!

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