Hot Mum Summer Reading List 2025

15 delicious books for a dose of literary Vitamin D ☀️📚🍹

It’s that time of year again — evenings are lighter; the sun is shining (for now); for those of you with school age children the long summer break is in sight, and my ‘Hot Mum Summer Reading List’ is here! Whether you are looking for the literary equivalent of a beach holiday; a low-stakes, high-pleasure read that can be easily picked up and put back down; or something mental exfoliating when your mind is full of packing lists and planning, you will find it here!

As I have written before, audiobooks are often the secret to reading your way through hands-on, full-on days with kids (especially if, like me, you don’t have formal childcare during the summer holidays). The books which I think will be fabulous on audio are marked with a 🎧 so you can find your ideal listen!

I hope you find something here that gives you what you need this summer – please do let me know what you’ll be adding to your TBR!

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Six Books On My Summer TBR Pile

1. Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami 🎧

Emily Itami’s bittersweet debut Fault Lines was the perfect balance of elegance and unintimidating readability. And so I can’t wait to read her second novel, Kakigori Summer, which promises to be a moving exploration of love and loss, about three sisters reunited for a summer on the Japanese coast. It also has the most dreamy pastel-hued jacket! Out now.

2. The Possession by Anne Ernaux (translated by Anna Moschovakis)

I almost always read something by Annie Ernaux in the summer holidays. Ernaux’s writing – which so brilliantly pierces into female desire, corporeality, intellect, identity – allows me to return to another version of myself who isn’t stressing about suncreaming everyone or dealing with snack requests. This year, I’ll be reading Fitzcarraldo’s latest Ernaux offering – The Possession – a ‘striking portrait of a woman after a love affair has ended’, depicting the ‘all too familiar human tendency to seek control and certainty after rejection’. It’s a pleasingly concise 48 pages – perfect for reading in one sitting. Out now.

3. Father Figure by Emma Forrest 🎧

When it comes to Hot Mums, Emma Forrest is my icon. I think about her alluring and sensual memoir, Busy Being Free on an almost weekly basis. So, I’m very much coveting her forthcoming novel Father Figure, which is set at a dysfunctional private girls school. According to Slags author, Emma Jane Unsworth, ‘Father Figure is both a ferocious coming-of-age [story] and a fearless examination of the nature of obsession. It's mothers and daughters and female friends and older men, all under a red-lit microscope’. It sounds tantalising. Out on July 3rd.

4. Let The Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater (July) 🎧

I always know I’m in for a wickedly good time with Death of a Bookseller author, Alice Slater. Her second novel features an intimate dinner party turned interrogation; hangovers and humidity in New Orleans; a missing man – and an accomplished psychic who claims to have seen him. I’m expecting Let the Bad Times Roll to be a deliciously potent cocktail of dark secrets and bad vibes. Out July 10th.

(Btw, if you fancy a night off from the bedtime routine, why not join me at Waterstones Gower Street on July 10th for Alice’s London launch event, which will be chaired by Eliza Clark?)

5. The Other Wife by Jackie Thomas Kennedy 🎧

The Other Wife follows the shifting desires of a woman in her late thirties who longs for the life she didn’t choose. Exploring race and class, nostalgia, intimacy and its discontents – and pitched at fans of Elif Batuman and Kiley Reid – this sounds like the kind of smart and searing yet wholly bingeable read that can be easily slotted into the hustle and bustle of the summer holidays. Out on July 17th.

6. Slanting Towards The Sea by Lidija Hilje

I can’t think of a book I am more desperate to dive into than Slanting Towards the Sea. Set in the beautiful coastal city of Zada, this novel is described as a sensual, decades-long love story set against an emerging Croatia, which delves into cultural tensions, identity and memory. ‘At the heart of the novel’, says author, Lidija Hilje, ‘is a female protagonist who can’t help but want the kind of love that overwhelms and ruins and heals at the same time’. Out July 17th.

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Four Summer Releases I’ve Already Read and Know You Will Love

1. Island Calling (and Welcome to Glorious Tuga) by Francesca Segal 🎧

If you have yet to discover this gorgeous series, you are in for a treat! Welcome to Glorious Tuga is a modern day, Jane Austen-esque comedy of manners, washed up on a tropical island. Set on a lush, balmy far-flung British overseas territory, it follows the intertwined lives of the islanders – their romances, their flaws and their everyday dramas. Island Calling, the second book in the trilogy, has finally landed and it is every bit as satisfying as its predecessor.

Read it for: This series is the best kind of escapist read. This isn’t a vapid, frothy read about poolside mojitos. Sure, the beaches, rainforests and endless sunshine certainly hit the spot when British summer weather fails to deliver, but this is also a book about a community of people, who look after each other. If you are feeling frazzled, lonely or low and need to give yourself some self-compassion, I wholeheartedly recommend spending some time in Tuga. Out now. (Read my review of Welcome to Glorious Tuga)

2. The Original by Nell Stevens 🎧

Set in 1899, The Original is about Grace Inderwick, a young woman with an unusual gift for forging paintings. As usual, Nell Stevens (whose writing is always, for me, synonomous with enormous literary pleasure) brings together themes of art and creativity; love and desire in playful and dazzling new ways.

Read it for: As I wrote in the most recent issue of Crib Notes, ‘The Original is an intriguing literary puzzle, pieced together with irresistible wit and intelligence [...] This is a book which will make your mind fizz when you want to think about something other than the mental load.’ Out now. (Read my review).

3. Lush by Rochelle Dowden Lord 🎧

Sensuous, heady and delectably readable, Lush is about four people who are invited to a French vineyard, where they will taste the oldest wine in the world. As the hot days spiral into bacchanalian chaos, propelled forwards by one unexpected event after another, chemistry fizzes between the guests and boundaries spill and blur.

Read it for: A decadent sun-soaked, wine-soaked holiday without the hangover (or the challenges of travelling with children). Out now. (Read my review)

4. Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

In this mischievously comic and deliciously clever novel, two married Creative Writing Professors, Simone (campus sex icon) and Ethan (a sometime novelist), find themselves accidentally drawn into extracurricular love affairs — one with the department secretary, the other with a graduate student. Unsurprisingly, the problem with entanglements between writers is a narrative one: who gets to decide what’s truth and what’s fiction when it comes to love, sex, and betrayal? Seduction Theory is stylish, sexy and absolutely does not take itself too seriously.

Read it for: Grown-up good fun. Plus a lot of lolz at Ethan’s expense (‘Poor Ethan. He was inexperienced.’) It’s also a pleasingly short 213 pages. Out 14th August.

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Five From The Archive

• Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

  ‘Drenched with desire, simmering with familial resentments and infused with the mythology of its Mediterranean setting, Hot Milk is a dazzling novel about mother-daughter relationships’ Read my full review here.

• Sandwich by Catherine Newman 🎧

  ‘Gets right under the skin of motherhood as a physical experience and offers up big emotional truths with heart-on-sleeve frankness … and is the kind of low stakes, high pleasure read that is both a joy and a relief’ Read my full review here.

• The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

  ‘Once the holidays began and I was no longer weighed down by the mental load, I wanted to sink my teeth into something mentally invigorating … a mesmerising, intelligent read’ Read my full review here.

• The Wedding People by Alison Espach 🎧

  ‘the sparkling story of Phoebe, recent divorcée and underappreciated English Literature Professor [...] gloriously funny and genuinely uplifting’. Paperback out July 3rd. Read my full review here.

• Same As It Ever Was by Clare Lombardo 🎧

  ‘an engrossing look at marriage and long-term love; fidelity and forgiveness, and muddling one’s way through being a parent. I adored this novel’ Paperback out July 3rd. Read my full review here.

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