The Ultimate Summer Books Preview

Memorial Day has come and gone, marking the unofficial beginning of summer—and here in the seasonless internet, marking the official beginning of Summer Content. Accordingly, plenty of publications have come out with lists of must-read summer books in the past couple of weeks. But how can you know which one to trust? If you have faith in critical consensus, look no further. (If you don’t, well, you may be interested anyway.) To figure out which books people are most excited about this summer, I looked through 28 summer preview lists—which recommended a grand total of 437 distinct titles, and which were mostly not limited to books actually being published over the next few months—and tracked which books appeared most often. Below is a list of everything that was recommended at least twice, in descending order of popularity. If nothing else, it’s a place to start.

11 mentions:

Lauren Groff, Florida

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9 mentions:

Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place For Us

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7 mentions:

Crystal Hana Kim, If You Leave Me
Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister
R. O. Kwon, The Incendiaries

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6 mentions:

Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President is Missing
Madeline Miller, Circe
Tommy Orange, There There
David Sedaris, Calypso
Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

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5 mentions:

Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Fruit of the Drunken Tree
Helen Hoang, The Kiss Quotient
Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
Christine Mangan, Tangerine
Allison Pearson, How Hard Can It Be
Camille Perri, When Katie Met Cassidy
Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

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4 mentions:

Judy Blundell, The High Season
Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire
Rachel Cusk, Kudos
Christina Dalcher, Vox
Emily Giffin, All We Ever Wanted
Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room
Lillian Li, Number One Chinese Restaurant
Carola Lovering, Tell Me Lies
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

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3 mentions:

Chloe Benjamin, The Immortalists
Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece
Tara Isabella Burton, Social Creature
Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Aja Gabel, The Ensemble
Roxane Gay, Not That Bad
Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country
Vanessa Hua, A River of Stars
Maria Hummel, Still Lives
Dave Itzkoff, Robin
Ling Ma, Severance
Paula McLain, Love and Ruin
James A. McLaughlin, Bearskin
Michael Ondaatje, Warlight
Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
Joe Mungo Reed, We Begin Our Ascent
Susie Orman Schnall, The Subway Girls
Curtis Sittenfeld, You Think It, I’ll Say It
Anne Tyler, Clock Dance
Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels

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2 mentions:

Megan Abbott, Give Me Your Hand
Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone
Renée Ahdieh, Smoke in the Sun
Rumaan Alam, That Kind of Mother
Michael Arceneaux, I Can’t Date Jesus
Kimberly Bell, Three Days Missing
Aliette de Bodard, The Tea Master and the Detective
Alice Bolin, Dead Girls
Christopher Bonanos, Flash
Melissa Broder, The Pisces
Kim Brooks, Small Animals
Michael Chabon, Pops
Patrick Chamoiseau, trans. Linda Coverdale, Slave Old Man
Amy Chozick, Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling
Georgia Clark, The Bucket List
Elisabeth Cohen, The Glitch
James Comey, A Higher Loyalty
Sloane Crosley, Look Alive Out There
Yrsa Daley-Ward, The Terrible
Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Mournable Body
Michelle Dean, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
Helen DeWitt, Some Trick
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
Heid E. Erdrich, ed., New Poets of Native Nations
Gaël Faye, Small Country
Kelly Forsythe, Perennial
Dorothea Benton Frank, By Invitation Only
Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day
Elin Hilderbrand, The Perfect Couple
Chelsea Hodson, Tonight I’m Someone Else
A. M. Homes, Days of Awe
Samantha Hunt, The Seas
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon
Samantha Irby, Meaty
Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars
Carolyn Kepnes, Providence
Porochista Khakpour, Sick
Rosalie Knecht, Who Is Vera Kelly?
R. F. Kuang, The Poppy War
Amitava Kumar, Immigrant, Montana
Robert Kurson, Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon
Catherine Lacey, Certain American States
Stephen Markley, Ohio
Michelle Markowitz, Caroline Moss, Hey Ladies!
Morgan Matson, Save the Date
Glynnis MacNicol, No One Tells You This
Michelle McNamara, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto, Tiny Crimes
Lydia Millet, Fight No More
Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done
Andrew Morton, Meghan: A Hollywood Princess
Chris Nashawaty, Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story
Nell Irvin Painter, Old in Art School
Gregory Pardlo, Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America
Richard Powers, The Overstory
Todd S. Purdum, Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution
Alissa Quart, Squeezed
Richard Ratay, Don’t Make Me Pull Over!
Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Nell Scovell, Just the Funny Parts . . . and a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club
Mimi Schwartz, Ticker
Peng Shepherd, The Book of M
Gregory Blake Smith, The Maze at Windermere
Sabaa Tahir, A Reaper at the Gates
Angie Thomas, On the Come Up
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People
Raymond A. Villareal, A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising
Ryan H. Walsh, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil, The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Lauren Weisberger, When Life Gives You Lululemons
Beatriz Williams, The Summer Wives
Leni Zumas, Red Clocks

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Sources Consulted:

Glamour‘s “The 17 Best Books to Read This Summer“; The Washington Post‘s “The 39 Books We’re Talking About This Summer“; The New York Times‘s “17 Refreshing Books to Read This Summer“; TIME‘s “22 New Books to Read This Summer“; Bloomberg’s “10 Books for a Summer Reading List“; Refinery 29’s “Brilliant Books To Bring To The Beach This Summer“; NYLON’s “46 Great Books To Read This Summer“; Esquire‘s “The 20 Smart Books You’ll Want To Read at the Beach This Summer“; Publishers Weekly’s “Staff Picks Summer 2018“; Chicago Tribune‘s “25 Hot Books for Summer“; Town&Country‘s “16 Books to Read This Summer“; Goodreads’s “The Hottest Books of Summer“; Bustle’s “32 New Fiction Books Coming Out This Summer That You’ll Definitely Want In Your Travel Bag“; Newsday‘s “Best Summer Books 2018“; Newsweek‘s “The 50 Coolest Books to Read This Summer“; Parade‘s “The Top 26 Hottest Books of Summer 2018“; Journal Sentinel’s “85 Books for Summer Reading“; Vanity Fair‘s “Summer Reading: This Season’s Ultimate Fiction List“; Condé Nast Traveler’s “10 Best Summer Reads of 2018“; USA Today’s “10 Hot Books for Summer Reading“; New York Post‘s “The 20 Best Reads for Your Summer Break“; The Daily Beast’s “The Best Summer Beach Reads of 2018“; WIRED‘s “12 Books You Must Read This Summer“; Good Morning America’s “Best Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer“; Chicago Magazine‘s “10 New Books for Your Summer Reading List“; PopSugar’s “This Summer’s Hottest New Books For Every Type of Reader“; Good Housekeeping‘s “The 25 Best New Books for Summer 2018“; BuzzFeed’s “30 Summer Books To Get Excited About“.