Do We Have A 2026 Book of The Summer?

This newsletter would usually be behind the paywall, but it was kindly unlocked thanks to Sol de Janeiro (#sponsored). You can take 10% off your first purchase of best-selling favorites, including their Bum Bum Cream and Cheirosa 62 perfume mist, when you use this link!

Hi Book Pals,

How’s your summer reading going?

Personally, I’m having a big bookish summer! Over on the podcast, we’re partnering with Brazilian-inspired self care brand, Sol de Janeiro, on our Summer of Sol. As part of it, we’re doing 3 bonus beach read book club episodes. We read and discussed The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand in July (just in time for the adaptation’s release on Peacock). And I’d love for you to read along with us in August when we’ll be discussing One & Only by Maurene Goo on August 20.

We’re also hitting the road to bring together our community to talk books and beauty products IRL. We had our first event at Three Avenues Bookshop in Chicago last week, and it was an absolute blast! (More info coming soon about events in Miami and New York City.)

But on a more macro level, do we have a collective Book of the Summer? Back in May, we chatted about what 2026’s Book of the Summer might be, a brand of book speculation I take very seriously. There’s nothing I love more than when it suddenly feels like we’re all reading the same book at the same time! (Think: The Wedding People by Alison Espach or The God of the Woods by Liz Moore in 2024, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang in 2023, or Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin in 2022.) Or are we— *horrified gasp*—in the midst of another vibeless summer like we had in 2025.1

Let’s check in on the contenders and also see if any dark horses climbing their way to Book of the Summer status.

When we chatted in May, my top predictions were Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune, and Whistler by Ann Patchett. Are any of them the Book of the Summer?

Sometimes the most obvious answer is the correct one. When we look back at 2026, I think we’ll remember it as the year of Yesteryear, which came out in mid-April and has been in the top 3 of The New York Times’ hardcover fiction best seller list for the past 15 weeks. (7 of those in the #1 slot.) It’s racked up an astonishing 619K Goodreads ratings. All the more astonishing considering it’s a debut.

But, the book has also been polarizing. (Though let’s remember it has an average rating of 3.92 on Goodreads, so people generally like it. And I’m one of them!) One question raised in the comments section of the May post was: Can a book be the Book of the Summer if it isn’t universally liked. I think yes, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in this letter’s comments. I’ve also noticed that in the past month or so, the tides are turning and I’m seeing more positive reviews now that the initial wave of controversy has run its course.

I stand by my initial prediction—I think Yesteryear is our book of the summer.

As far as my other horses go, I thought Every Year After, the adaptation based on Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After, might set off a Heated Rivalry-eqsue halo effect for her new novel, Our Perfect Storm, but that doesn’t seem to have panned out. (Though I loved OPS!)

Then, there’s Whistler by Ann Patchett, which has also had consistent best seller list placement since its release on June 2, usually trailing a slot behind Yesteryear. 7 weeks on the list is nothing to sneeze at, but I have the same problem here that I did last year with claims that Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid was 2025’s Book of the Summer. Whistler is doing well, but is it doing better than the average Ann Patchett book? To me, no. In fact, I recall there being more buzz around Tom Lake, her 2023 release, though some of that might have been down to Meryl Streep narrating the audiobook.

Back in May, I also named a few underdog contenders. What’s up with them?

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum—also a debut—is putting up some serious numbers with 152K Goodreads ratings. I was talking to the staff at Three Avenues before our event last week and they agreed it’s been a consistently solid seller. Their take was that people love a podcast-centric book (see: None of This is True by Lisa Jewell) and it’s been a minute since we had a big one. On the other hand, Olivia Muenter posited that it’s the ultimate crossover novel: a mystery, but not too scary; a little bit of a love story without veering into romance territory. I think this one will absolutely go down as a breakout debut from 2026, but doesn’t reach Book of the Summer status.

Same with Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It by Brooke Averick with it’s nearly 60K Goodreads ratings. It had a very buzzy launch, but chatter has died down since its late-May release. (FWIW, I read this and found it delightful! And very fresh within the romance genre!)

So Yesteryear might be the Book of the Summer, but if I had to choose a scent of the summer it would undoubtedly be Sol de Janeiro’s Cheirosa 91 perfume mist with notes of passionfruit, honey caramel, and Rio pink rose. It’s floral but also fun and summery! Or maybe you prefer their classic Cheirosa 62 perfume mist—the same scent of their cult favorite Brazilian Bum Bum cream—with top notes of pistachio and almond rounded out with vanilla, salted caramel, and sandalwood scents. Either way, Sol de Janeiro’s perfume mists have become a beach bag go-to for me this summer—along with a great read, obviously! And you can take 10% off your first purchase of many of their best-selling products when you use this special link!

When we first chatted about 2026’s Book of the Summer, I also polled some publishing insiders to get their take, too. Here’s what they voted for:

Did any of them predict the Book of the Summer?

Personally, I loved The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson. It nails the smart but soapy beach read Venn diagram. I’ve been surprised that I’m not hearing more about it despite a Jenna’s Book Club pick and the success of Jackson’s debut, Pineapple Street. But perhaps that’s just my algorithm? (Let me know in the comments.)

Two of my favorite reads so far this year have been Into the Blue by Emma Brodie and Dolly All The Time by Annabel Monaghan, but I’m not sure either has broken romance-reader containment. (Quite hard to do! Some readers have big biases against romance novels.) Meanwhile, Games: A Love Story by Anna Maria Volkova has had a quieter release than its one voter might have anticipated, but I am seeing buzz build (at least in romance-reading circles) and will be excited to see how it fares throughout the rest of the summer.

And our latest-releasing contender is Kitten by Stacey Yu, which comes out Aug 4. So jury’s still out there, too.

If I had to name a dark horse contender for Book of the Summer, it might be Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, which was originally self-published in 2020 and later acquired by a trad publisher in 2024.

The Pitch: When an alien invasion turns Earth into a deadly, televised dungeon, Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s talking cat, Princess Donut, must fight for survival on a sadistic intergalactic game show, facing monsters, aliens, and a chaotic AI.

Even though this is squarely outside my reading tastes, I seem to be hearing about it everywhere. From it being the book that turned my friend’s non-reading husband into a book lover, to being mentioned as a surprise hit for other similarly uninclined fans. As I type this, the series is currently holding down 4 of the 15 slots on The New York Times’ hardcover fiction best seller list.

Another possible contender? The Calamity Club by Katheryn Stockett, also the author of The Help. I spent the weekend with a friend who was tracking an Amazon order for his mother-in-law who needed the book for book club, but couldn’t find any copies locally. (It seems like it might have gone into early reprints!)

The Pitch: The multimillion-copy-selling author of The Help returns with a bold, big-hearted novel about a group of unbreakable women, fighting for what's rightfully theirs—and the power of friendship to change everything.

And it’s not just my friend’s MIL who’s excited about this book. Every single review I’ve seen cross my social feed has been a rave!

But we’re only half-way through the summer, so there’s still room for surprises! I’d love to hear what you think our 2026 Book of the Summer is in the comments.

I’ll be back at the end of August with a poll to crown our official Book of the Summer. But until then…

May your beach bag be heavy and your TBR full,

Becca

Thanks so much to Sol de Janeiro for sponsoring today’s newsletter. And a reminder that you can take 10% off your first purchase of best-selling favorites, including their Brazilian Bum Bum Cream and Cheirosa 62 perfume mist, when you use this link!