The Best Beach Reads of All Time

Don't let the historical setting fool you: this romance is one of the steamiest I've ever read, and it kept me turning pages for hours on my last beach day. It follows Manuela as she plans to spend one last debaucherous sapphic summer in 1889 Paris before she is a married woman. There, she meets Cora, a wealthy lesbian — think Anne Lister vibes — who wants to buy a property off of her. Manuela agrees, but only if Cora shows her the underground queer scene. As the heat between them intensifies, it gets harder and harder for Manuela to imagine leaving. This is such a fun, escapist read that belongs in the beach bag of any romance fan.

This book isn’t just a beach read. And it isn’t just brazenly titled Beach Read. It’s an ardent, wholehearted defense of beach reads as a whole. January Andrews writes these types of books, but has writer’s block after her father dies and she discovers his secrets. Augustus Everett, her new neighbor and former college enemy, is an author of dark literary novels who is also having writing trouble. They make a pact: she’ll write a highbrow novel and he’ll write a rom-com. Their enemies-to-lovers journey mixes levity and grief in a way that felt perfect for readers in 2020, becoming a wildly popular and influential contemporary romance from day one.

A lavish birthday party is being held for Mr. Hosokawa, a billionaire, in an unnamed South American country. As celebrated opera singer Roxanne Cross sings for the guests, armed terrorists take the party hostage. As the evening progresses, the characters connect in unexpected ways and build bonds that cross continents and cultures. Much of the action in this prize-winning novel takes place over the course of a single evening, which makes it impossible to stop reading before the very last page.

I sometimes joke that I know a book is a beach read when the non-reader people in my life begin raving about its adaptation. This book certainly fits that bill! Before it was a wildly popular HBO (Max? HBO Max?) series starring Shailene Woodley, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and one of the Skarsgårds, Big Little Lies was one of those books you could not not run into in 2014. It's a sharp and suspenseful read about three women leading what appear to be perfect lives in an upscale coastal community. But of course, there are secrets lurking beneath that glossy veneer, and a shocking murder at a school fundraiser brings them all to the surface. I still see this book on a plane, a train, or near a warm body of water all the time.

A good guy doing bad things for good (well, let’s say at least understandable) reasons will always work. Books about cars always work. We are off to a good start. But it is the web of racial, cultural, and economic strings that pull on the characters of Blacktop Wasteland that elevate this from another very good crime novel into the rare territory of compelling, page-turning novels that are about something. Cosby has been steadily growing in popularity, but I think you can still get on board and be an early fan. You won’t be sorry.

The first in a best-selling series, Crazy Rich Asians introduces readers to the luxe world of the Young family of Singapore. The film adaptation has become the plane movie, but the books are THE beach books. A summer in Singapore with her boyfriend Nick sounds perfect to Rachel, until she discovers the truth about his rich family and all the drama that comes with it. Think soap opera drama of affairs, gossip, and feuds. Kwan’s snappy signature style features slang in multiple dialects and footnotes to provide context on Chinese-Singaporean culture. Like a syrupy iced cocktail, this series is the perfect blend of opulence and delight.

Taylor Jenkins Reid's engrossing and readable novels have made her a staple beach read author, and it's hard to choose just one that belongs on your beach towel. You can't go wrong with this "oral history" of a fictional 1970s rock band, though. It's a classic story of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, with a lot of big personalities competing. You'll be pulled into their rise to fame and how it all fell apart. This is an especially good choice for beach (or poolside) audiobook readers: the full-cast audiobook, particularly Jennifer Beals as Daisy Jones, takes the oral history format to another level.

A cozy murder mystery romp set at a resort wedding is exactly what a beach read should be: fun, compelling, and relatively lighthearted. If I’m on vacation, I want to sit back and immerse myself in a story so good, I don’t want to put it down, even for pool or beach time. That’s Dial A for Aunties. An accidental death, a bunch of meddling aunties trying to dispose of a dead body, and a former flame showing up at the most inopportune time — that’s exactly the kind of nonstop story I’m after. It’s the perfect blend of mayhem and humor that will have you laughing and guessing until the last page.

If "Calgon, take me away" were a book, it would be Elizabeth Gilbert's blockbuster 2006 memoir of leaving her husband and her successful career to spend a year traveling in search of the elusive something more. She feasts to her heart's content in Italy, studies meditation in India, and seeks new connections in Bali. This is delicious, indulgent, occasionally hedonistic (and, yes, privilege-infused) escapism that flew off shelves before divorce memoirs were cool and was adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts. It might not inspire you to change your life, but it's all the permission you'll need to order another spritz and take your second beach nap of the day.

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” Celeste Ng's runaway bestseller starts off with that banger of an opening line, but what follows is a slow-burn mystery set in 1970s Ohio about the unraveling of a Chinese American family after the death of their teenage daughter. The book examines race, gender, identity, and the burden of familial expectations, pulling you in from that opening line while slowly revealing its secrets. It's no wonder this made all the bestseller lists and won all the awards back in 2015- it's proof that a beach read doesn't need to go at breakneck speed to keep you glued to the page.

It’s no accident that Erica Jong’s now-classic novel about female desire was published the same year Roe v. Wade was decided. Though it might be hard to imagine in an era when bestsellers are packed with explicit scenes between humans, dragons, and all manner of fantasy folk, in 1973, a book about a straight woman actively — and joyfully — seeking no-strings-attached sex (what Jong famously called “the zipless fuck”) was genuinely transgressive. Since then, Fear of Flying has been read through every feminist lens imaginable. It's been praised, panned, canceled, revived, and dissected to a degree that would surely drive its main character, Isadora Wing, a little nuts. More than 50 years on, it remains bold, messy, and sure to spark conversation. Hot takes are fun. Read it so you can form your own.

In the 1980s, a depressed housewife befriends a witty old woman at a nursing home who shares her life story, regaling her with tales from a small Alabama town and the two formidable women who ran the town cafe. You might not think a book set in part during the Great Depression would be beach-reading material, especially not one that deals with racism, domestic abuse, and murder. But this story of female friendship, community, resistance, and love in its many forms is exactly the kind of read to settle in with for hours: plotty, witty, full of heart, and grounded in a profound sense of place. This 1987 gem is the first "they were roommates!" book I ever read, and includes one of my favorite examples of comeuppance of all time. And if movies are also on your beach sojourn agenda, the 1991 adaptation is perfection.

Chloe Brown’s “Get a Life” list is a step-by-step plan to push a chronically ill computer geek like her out of her comfort zone, but she knows she could use a mentor. Her building’s handyman, Red, looks like just the man to help. He’s an artist with tattoos, a motorcycle, and a begrudging willingness to help a posh girl like Chloe. But as Red helps her, Chloe begins to uncover the secrets behind his cool exterior, falling for him even more in the process.

Each book in The Brown Sisters series was a bestselling beach read upon release. I highly recommend these clever, funny, heartwarming romances for any day in the sun.

Did somebody demand a page-turner? Gillian Flynn's 2012 psychological crime thriller is so good it launched me into reading her entire catalog of mindfuckery and resulted in a truly excellent David Fincher adaptation. Missing women mystery and thriller books are no strangers to beach reads lists, but I dare you to name one more deliciously twisted and surprising than Gone Girl. The book was a New York Times Best Seller, and I can't count the number of noses I've personally seen stuck in this book, from beaches to airports to public spaces and coffee shops, over the many years since the book came out.

Stella Payne is too busy for romance. At 42, she's killing it in a high-powered career and raising her 11-year-old son, racing from meetings to carpool duty and back again. Stella is busy, and she is tired. So she books a trip to Jamaica for some R&R, and, well, she finds herself getting busy with a man half her age. That'll wake a lady up! This is steamy middle-aged wish fulfillment at its very best. At a time when it was rare for books by Black authors to get sustained attention in mainstream media, Stella was EVERYWHERE, from Oprah's Book Club to the big-screen box office. Terry McMillan gave us Taye Diggs (he made his debut in the 1998 adaptation) and a phrase that has stayed in popular usage. Hell of a combo.

Jaws isn't a very good book, but its sex, violence, and killer shark left millions of readers afraid to go in the water. But it's worth noting as one of the bestselling beach reads of all time, with over 20 million copies sold, and since it's arguably the most destructive work of fiction ever. After the release of the movie adaptation, people killed sharks in record numbers, out of fear, or for fun and sport, driven by the idea that sharks are inherently evil. Spoiler: They're not. Millions (more than usual) died. It got so bad that Benchley started education and conservation efforts to try to fix some of the damage done to shark populations.

Every generation gets its Frankenstein story. For the 1990s, the rapid expansion of DNA technologies promised to bring science fiction into reality, and that included cloning extinct species. Jurassic Park, I don't imagine I have to tell you, is the cautionary tale of an ill-fated theme park filled with actual dinosaurs brought back from extinction. While the movie is an all-time classic, the book is fantastic, too! Short chapters make for cinematic reading, including unforgettable scenes of dinosaur-on-human violence. When I'm on the beach, I want a book that digs its claws into me and doesn't let go. What can beat dinosaur claws?

Okay, so hear me out on why Lumberjanes is my ideal beach read.

It's the story of a group of young ladies at summer camp. But it's no ordinary summer camp. The forest is filled with magical creatures, dangers, and mysteries. And these young ladies, these Lumberjanes? They run toward danger and always rely on each other and their friendship to solve every problem and right every wrong.

Yes, it's a comic book. Yes, it's pretty much middle grade. And that's why it's perfect. It's easy to read, fun and funny, and it warms the heart as the sun warms my skin.

This vivid book about two female friends coming of age alongside one another in a poor neighborhood of Naples is a modern classic and worldwide bestseller for a reason. The bookish Elena and wild Lila grow up surrounded by drama, rivalries, and twists. They compete with one another even as they try to stand by each other. Literary but intensely readable, My Brilliant Friend is the perfect accompaniment for any lounge by the beach or pool. I consider Ferrante our modern-day Jane Austen: writing seriously and vividly about women's relationships and minds. And if you fall in love, there are three more books in the Neapolitan series to jump into!

There are several qualities I look for in a perfect beach read: a thrilling plot, a clever sense of humor, a vivid setting, and (bonus!) a low page count that you get through in one sitting. My Sister, the Serial Killer delivers all of that, plus two morally complicated characters you can’t help but root for, even as they’re committing (or at least enabling) violent crimes. Korede has always envied her younger sister Ayoola’s beauty and charm. Now Ayoola has picked up a habit of killing her boyfriends, and Korede is stuck cleaning up the bloodstains. When a doctor at the Lagos hospital where Korede works catches her little sister’s eye, Korede already knows how it will end. But can she do anything to stop it?

If you're new to manga or simply looking for new-to-you manga, One Piece is perfect for the beach for a few reasons. Apart from being one of the longest-running and most internationally loved manga series, it's got pirates sailing the Seven Seas of a fantastical world, found family, and even a few heart-touching moments. At the head of it all is Monkey D. Luffy, who dreams of finding the One Piece treasure and becoming King of the Pirates. He just needs a loyal crew...and to deal with the curse of never being able to swim again that he accidentally exchanged for an extraordinary power.

I didn’t know much (ok anything really) about the back and forth plight of Koreans in Japan in the early to middle of the 20th century. And while Pachinko is of course hugely and specifically about that time and those people and those dynamics, the specificity of the characters and relationships is where the novel shines. You will get some history and politics to be sure, but they come in through the side door. In the main rooms are the strife and love and silences and yearning that make for the intimate epic that is daily life, wherever you are in the world.

I was 18 when Prodigal Summer first came out, and I was immediately and utterly captivated by the oh-so-steamy summer fling between Deanna, a woman in her late 40s working as a park ranger in Appalachia, and Eddie, a 28-year-old rancher who hunts in the woods Deanna is working to protect. There are two other romantic relationships in these pages as well, but it's really all about Deanna and Eddie. And it's about the birds and the bees — literally and figuratively — and the flowers and the trees and the ways our lives and relationships are ruled by the laws of nature, whether we know it or not. This may not be Kingsolver's best book or her best-known, but it is hands-down her sexiest, and here from the long view of my early 40s, I wouldn't ask for anything else.

Beach reads and contemporary romance are almost synonymous in my mind, and when I think of great contemporary romance, I think Red, White & Royal Blue. The rivalry between a prince and the son of the U.S. president causes an international incident. But when they’re forced to get to know each other, their growing chemistry almost causes an international incident of a very different kind. McQuiston’s writing is fun and witty, full of the kind of quick banter I love in a romance. A good beach read should leave you smiling and recommending the book to everyone you know, and this book will absolutely have you doing both before it's through.

Fans of Our Flag Means Death will love this raucous, queer pirate fantasy. Avra is a slutty former spy who recently stole ultra-secret plans from his employer, plans that would radically change the world’s power dynamics if made public. He flees on board a pirate ship where he harbors a massive crush on the captain, and falls for a stunningly handsome monk who is somehow a crew member. With pirate cake competitions, glowing dogs, and too many sex jokes to count, this fantasy will have you cackling at the beach!

Reading about summer vacations on summer vacations is one of the great bookish pleasures, and Whitehead’s auto-fictionish Sag Harbor is a slice of life that resists easy and familiar categorization. Centering on a nerdy Black 15-year-old, Sag Harbor is more about capturing the essence of a place that doesn’t really have a place in American imagination: an enclave of beach homes on Long Island owned by Black people. Even so, it is about the atmosphere and hang more than the sociology. There isn't a plot, really, but like many summers, a series of incidents and moments. Some encounter race directly, some are as cool and ephemeral as an ice cream cone on an August afternoon.

Two Black authors reconnect in a story that feels as hot sticky sweet as its setting. As the past teenage love of supernatural romance writer Eva and literary darling Shane unfurls, so too does a history of trauma. When they found each other as teenagers, they spent one frenzied week together, wildly in love. Twenty years later, that week attempts to repeat itself, and the steam is there, but the trust may not be.

This will take you on a ride.

Book club books and beach reads have major crossover appeal, and this is certainly true for Kiley Reid's breakout debut novel, a Reese's Book Club pick, following a young Black babysitter and the affluent "girl-boss" mom who employs her. It is so cringey the way Alix performs allyship after a video of a racist security guard accusing babysitter Emira of kidnapping her daughter goes viral. Human train wrecks make for unputdownable books — you have to see the fail through to the end — and the critique of wealth, privilege, and entitlement in Such a Fun Age is as sharp as it is satisfying. The buzz around this book was huge and deserved.

Not all beach reads can be described as light-hearted and bubbly — you’ll more likely find Toni Morrison's classic novel of friendship and betrayal on a high school summer reading list than a beach reads list, but it has a place on both. Perhaps it's because friendships are so often forged and broken in the summertimes of our earliest years that these stories are ripe for seasonal reading, and Morrison's visceral storytelling pairs the trials of friendship with small-town gossip and long-held secrets. All the right ingredients for a summer read. If you’re looking for a quick but potent beach read, you can’t go wrong with Sula.

From inside today's news cycle, it's almost quaint to look back at what made The Da Vinci Code a controversy: a secret society that counted some of history's most important players among its members has been hiding truths that, if revealed, would rock the Catholic Church and the foundations of modern Christianity. Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon pulls on his best tweed jacket and his trusty Mickey Mouse watch for a globetrotting, page-turning, puzzle-solving adventure that is as fun as it is ridiculous. When this was released in 2003, you couldn't lounge by a pool, board a plane, or turn on a daytime talk show without seeing it. You know how it seems like romantasy is the only thing anyone talks about these days? That was The Da Vinci Code in 2003. More than 20 years on, it's still a good time.

Chick lit? For summer? Groundbreaking. Lauren Weisberger's story about Andrea, a small-town girl trying to make it in the cutthroat world of high fashion, is a monument to fish-out-of-water stories and the glory days of print media. Stiletto-sharp social commentary goes down easy as Andy learns the hard truth about so many dream jobs and seemingly glamorous industries. The term "chick lit" may be passé now, but the question of whether selling your soul to get to the top will actually be worth it is timeless. At a moment when fluffy women's fiction dominated shelves and bestseller lists, The Devil Wears Prada had both style and substance. That's what staying power is made of.

A promising young lawyer named Mitch McDeere scores a wildly lucrative job at a Memphis law firm, a job that seems too good to be true. Spoiler: That's because it is. But he wouldn't know that if he hadn't gotten suspicious about the firm and started asking questions. Now Mitch doesn't know who he can trust, not even the FBI, which is investigating his bosses. The Firm has all the right ingredients for a great beach read: money, power, prestige, sex, suspicious deaths, double crossings, secrets, dangerous criminals. How is it only 560 pages long?? This 1991 blockbuster was EVERYWHERE after its release and has sold seven million copies to date!

Scandinavian crime fiction has enjoyed several periods of popularity. Larsson's series, which explores the cruel and gruesome underbelly of human behavior, captured readers immediately both in his home country and in America. The book follows a journalist hired to find answers about a missing girl from a wealthy family and 24-year-old Lisbeth Salander, a hacker with a brutal backstory who assists the journalist in solving the crime. Those seeking a breezy escape may be surprised to find this more plodding than contemporary crime fiction, but its cultural impact cannot be understated.

Liz Moore's hugely popular 2024 thriller was one of my favorite reads of that year because it both fed my latent desire to go to summer camp and quenched my thirst for rich-people-problems novels. You're thrown into the mystery of the missing camper, the summer camp owners' own daughter, from page one, and the shifting POVs keep the intrigue moving at a fast clip, hurtling you toward that sweet, horrifying spot where reliable and unreliable narrators are unmasked and stories coalesce. A beach read cannot bore, and this upstairs-downstairs (but make it camp) tale will have a death grip on your attention.

Here is an underrated element of The Great Gatsby: it is mess-y. And I mean this in the extremely modern sense of high melodrama. There is drinking and arguing and intrigue and getting up to all kinds of no good (no spoilers). As it has been cemented in the firmament of Classic American Novels discourse, the raucousness of drinking gin and driving with the top down while arguing with your lover element to Gatsby has had its corners sanded down. Yes, the sentences are beautiful and clean. Yes, there is a green light at the end of the dock. But make no mistake: this is a novel of the Roaring Twenties and a damn good time.

Sometimes what you want in a beach read is a freakin' romp and that is precisely what you're getting here. In the 1970s, a teenage girl finds some cryptic letters and a mysterious book with a dragon on the front in her father's library. She confronts him about these findings, and so begins a wild ride back and forth through time and all across Eastern Europe in pursuit of — wait for it — Vlad the Impaler. You read that right: Dracula is alive and doing crimes, and he's been disappearing people (and worse) for centuries. There's adventure, there's libraries, there's creepy monks and gothic horror. What can I say? I promised you a romp.

Don't forget to throw some capers on your beach reads list this season, and there is no greater source of madcap misadventures than Douglas Adams' singular space comedy. The wit! The absurdity! The existential crises! You truly don't have to be a science fiction reader to get into this book; all you need is a desire to have fun and go on a wild ride with everyman Arthur Dent and his unlikely companions. This book manages that rare trick of being both intellectual and laugh-out-loud, and it's the perfect accompaniment for ridiculous drinks with silly umbrellas. When you finish, you'll miss the characters like they were your own friends.

When a book is adapted into a big-hearted generational tale, that book is probably a beach read. Amy Tan's 1989 novel, inviting us into the lives of mother and daughter members of a mahjong club, was hugely popular. I was introduced to the film and the novel in my teens, and while they prompted debate about how stereotypes might have played into the novel's popularity, I remember the rarity and specialness of a story centering Asian Americans seeing so much success. It's the intimacy of a game played between people deeply connected with each other that makes this book comforting, even when the lives of these women prove complicated and hard.

It’s been seven years since I read Helen Hoang’s debut novel, and I still think about the characters, the setup (hello, male escort), their love story, and the giant smile this book put on my face. The Kiss Quotient — and really all of Hoang’s romances — have such a perfect balance of being real while making you root for love as you fall for her characters, and then finish wanting to hug the book to your chest. Beach reads should have an element of fun while also having enough weight to be worth your “vacation time,” and that is every word of this romance. It’s so good, it’s worth a reread!

The hook is unbelievably good: a stranded scientist tries to survive on Mars. But plenty of bad books have good hooks. What Andy Weir does with The Martian is more than science — it is magic. Part thriller, part comedy, part horror, part hard-core sci-fi: this particular potion should not work. Watney’s capable, affable, indefatigable, and corny self allows us to believe that this guy could grow potatoes on the Red Planet while chair-dancing to Donna Summer — and still be afraid to die. Short, journal-entry chapters make the reading time fly by and cause you to wish maybe there was just one more disaster for Mark to handle.

Any of Casey McQuiston's novels would be welcome under your beach umbrella, but I think this is the obvious best choice. It's about two exes who accidentally reunite on a food and wine tasting tour across Europe. Both bisexual, they make a bet about who can sleep with someone first in each city they visit, but they can't deny the heat building between them again. The descriptions of food and drink, plus the beautiful locales, make this feel decadent. It’s steamy and sweet at the same time, with a heavy dose of yearning. If you, like me, are always reaching for queer beach reads, I'll add that I loved the bi and nonbinary representation, too.

This quintessential dark academia novel has been seducing those of us who like a little murder alongside our Classics lessons since the early '90s. While this is a bit on the longer side, it'll have you running through pages as you follow Richard during his time at a liberal arts college among an elitist and eccentric group of students led by one Classics professor.

What we do know is that one of them has died. The question is why and how.

The way I see it, there are two types of beach reads: the feel-good and the action-packed. While some people escape the world with a thriller or murder mystery, personally, I prefer something that makes my cynical self feel a little more hopeful — which is always easier while watching the waves on a sunny day. A. J. Fikry starts this story pretty cynical himself, living alone after his wife died. But when a newborn baby is left in his bookstore, he learns he still has more love to give. Let's face it, any book set in a bookstore is an easy sell to readers, and this is one of the best.

Bookseller and biographer Margaret is shocked when she's asked to write the biography of Vida Winter, a reclusive author known for a collection of stories with a famously missing 13th tale, and for telling fantastic lies whenever she's asked about it. Margaret agrees on one condition: Vida must swear to tell the truth. Her chronicle is a haunting tale exploring the death of her twin, a crumbling mansion, a descent into madness, and long-buried secrets. Books about books with literary twists aren't a hard sell for readers, but this one is a real treat for those who like their beach reading on the Gothic mystery side. It's the sort that will make you lose track of time and forget to reapply your sunscreen — ask me how I know.

Brit Bennett's 2020 novel tracing the lives of African American twin sisters, one who passes for white and one who does not, won awards and made so many lists. A Good Morning America Book Club pick and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year, everyone was reading this novel or had heard about it or blamed it for the spate of color blob covers appearing on shelves everywhere. The story is as sensational as it is meaty, written in a compelling voice and examining a tricky topic taken up by literary greats like Nella Larsen. It's deft and deep on top of being a page-turner, making it an excellent beach read.

A magical coastal estate in England. A slow-burn romance between a grumpgrump librarian and a kindhearted witch in search of found family. All things cottagecore. Come on! What more could you want from a beach read? Sangu Mandanna's sweet romance hits the molten hot core of cozy and my personal witchy wheelhouse. This is the book you'll want to grab when you're looking for a summer read to help you unwind and capture those carefree vibes. Yes, it has stakes and some racist, xenophobic antagonists, but the strife is soft. You can bet that it delivers the HEA and houseful of human-shaped cinnamon rolls (even if in the making).

In a classic meet-cute/meet-disaster, Alexa and Drew get to know each other while stuck in an elevator. They concoct a plan to fake date at Drew’s ex’s wedding, where they end up catching real feelings. Unfortunately, Drew’s an L.A. surgeon and Alexa’s the Berkeley mayor's chief of staff. Can their love close the distance between their real lives?

Guillory’s debut was part of the first wave of cartoon cover contemporaries in 2018, launching her prolific romance career. While romance books had always been classic beach reads, cartoon covers grew romance’s reach for a new wave of fans, and The Wedding Date was the perfect introduction.

The world had no idea what would unravel thanks to a little book featuring sparkly vampires. Twenty years after its debut, there's little doubt that Twilight changed the publishing world–and the reading world–forever. The commercial success of this story about a teenage girl named Bella moving across country and falling in love with a 104-year-old vampire named Edward helped catapult YA literature into the mainstream. The book and subsequent series would sell millions of copies, become a blockbuster film series, and be the inspiration for even more bestselling books (ahem, Fifty Shades of Grey).

Samantha Irby is the humor writer of our generation. She tells it like it is, giving us everything from her application to the Bachelorette to a description of her cat, Helen Keller (who hates her). As she talks about her job, her love life, her anxiety, and everything in between, you'll giggle, laugh out loud poolside, and maybe even cry once or twice. Her self-deprecating, wild humor is addictive. When I first read this book, I kept compulsively reading the best passages to my partner. You'll commiserate, shake your head, shield your eyes, and cackle in turn as you fly through these essays.

I brought Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? with me on vacation several years ago and devoured the whole thing on the plane ride there. It's the kind of book that, while hilarious, contains plenty of emotional depth. To me, those are the best beach reads. Yinka is a British Nigerian woman in her 30s who feels torn between two cultures, with her aunties and friends trying to micromanage her love life in different ways. In the lead-up to her cousin's wedding and with pressure building to find a date, she learns to trust her own intuition.