What’s your summer fantasy?
For us, it’s a piece of literature so good that the dog-eared pages end up stained with sweaty, suncream-covered fingerprints. A book that arrives pristine, but by the end of the season, shows clear and obvious signs of the living it’s done alongside you.
The literary world is heating up, with a new generation of readers reeled in by spicy fantasy tomes involving witches, warlocks, dragons and all things mystical and magical. But the problem with such darkly romantic novels is that they tend to take place in perennially winter-stricken, war-torn lands that never see sunlight. They’re broody, mysterious and indulgent – perfect for short days and long nights, but they’re not summer reads.
What sorts a great summer read from the crowded shelves? It should indulge the senses and mirror the season at play. This needn’t be in a literal manner, and instead can be executed simply through strong themes and characters alone. Think: raucous coming-of-age stories that traverse time, space and reality; steamy love affairs; illicit memoirs - even love letters to indulgent passions like eating, drinking and cooking.
Indeed, gastronomical fiction and non-fiction is proving to be increasingly popular in 2025, with myriad new launches by the likes of Laurie Woolever, Adam Roberts and the anonymous social media star Slutty Cheff on the horizon. In true Anthony Bourdain style, this genre is perfect for the summer. Your warm weather reading list should incorporate texts which will encourage you to theologise, philosophise, romanticise, fantasise and – we’ll say it again for the folks at the back – indulge.
Whether you’re in the market for a new queer summer romance, or a novel which will make your mouth water, we’ve curated an edit of the best indulgent summer reads for 2025 below.
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Real Americans by Rachel Khong
New York City, 1999. Need we say more?
Rachel Khong’s instant best-seller follows unpaid intern Lily Chen chasing her version of the American dream. She falls for a young financier, and suddenly the life she had always dreamed of feels within reach.
Fast-forward twenty years, and we’re plunged into the perspective of Nick - Lily’s teenage son - to whom she feels increasingly estranged, and who cannot seem to fathom his mother’s choices. But upon looking into his past, Nick begins to realise that the actions of his mother in 1990s NYC, and of his grandmother in China in the 1960s, are far more complex than he thought.
A candid, humorous insight into multi-generational Asian American life, this novel transcends time, space and the globe with irreverent wit and wisdom.
Buy now £7.18, Amazon
Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever
A woman who spent almost a decade working with the late, great Anthony Bourdain knows how to indulge.
Writer, editor and former cook Laurie Woolever’s new memoir, Care and Feeding, is a gastronomical yarn which traces the author’s life and work through food, romantic and professional relationships, mistakes, triumphs and more with the knowledge, sincerity and brutal honesty that only a longtime industry insider could provide.
Buy now £18.73, Amazon
Food Person by Adam Roberts
Slyly satirical and richly comedic, the protagonist in Adam Roberts’ debut novel is quite the pastiche of a modern gastronomist.
She’s a self-described food person whose apartment is filled to the brim with cookbooks and culinary accessories, but she’s also somewhat of a failure.
Having just been fired from her job at a digital food magazine, Isabella Pasternack finds herself ghost-writing a cookbook scandalised TV actress who, naturally, proves to be a nightmare to work with.
Buy now £21.00, Amazon
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth
Set in a small conservative village in Ireland in the early 1990s, Howarth’s tender coming-of-age novel follows Lucy during her last long, hot summer before school ends for good.
Despite having always felt out of place and unaligned in Crossmore, Lucy’s outer and inner worlds collide when sparks fly with her school friend Suzannah.
Suddenly, Lucy’s previously hazy future forks, and she’s left with an impossible choice.
Buy now £9.54, Amazon
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty
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A rollicking locked-in murder mystery, Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play is a wild ride from beginning to end.
Abigail has always been close with her brother, Benjamin. So, to celebrate his birthday, she throws him a murder mystery extravaganza in an old, rented mansion. Games are played and drinks are drunk, but the morning after offers up a rather deadly hangover.
All but Benjamin have survived the night’s events, and so an eminent detective is called upon to determine the killer. Ingenious, puzzling, comedic and moving, this is a true page-turner which breathes new life into an otherwise tired genre.
One to read in a single sitting by a pool somewhere hot and luxurious.
Buy now £14.99, Waterstones
Tart by Slutty Cheff
Slutty Cheff rose to fame on Instagram, where she shared her anonymous, erotic, wanton, and licentious tales of life in London’s restaurant scene.
Still unknown, Ms Cheff’s new memoir offers a hedonistic glimpse into her life in the capital’s gastronomical underbelly and is filled to the brim with fleshy, delectable sexual tales and unexpectedly sage romantic insights.
Available for pre-order.
Buy now £16.99, Waterstones
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht
Think of Eurotrash as a literary counterpart to the award-sweeping film A Real Pain.
Written by Christian Kracht and featuring a protagonist of the same name, who may or may not be our author, this bizarre and mordant novel follows a middle-aged man and his eighty-year-old mother, who has recently been released from a mental hospital.
Together and highly aware of each other’s horrifying and frustrating faults, the two embark on a road trip through Switzerland.
Buy now £10.75, Amazon
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Described by Stephen Fry as Britain’s The Great Gatsby, Evelyn Waugh’s novel takes place in the years following the First World War, otherwise affectionately known as the Roaring Twenties.
It follows The Bright Young Things of London’s Mayfair – capricious yet intelligent, sophisticated yet highly unsavoury, rich with experience yet increasingly poor in funds – a motley collection of characters who are bold, hilarious, anxious and fabulous.
Buy now £9.19, Amazon
Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
An interwoven, interconnected tale of messy love triangles and friendship trapezes, the eccentric Māori-Russian-Catalonian Vladisavljevic family’s titular children navigate love and queerness in present-day New Zealand. Well and truly laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a highly successful (dare we say, better?) modern answer to Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.
Buy now £13.99, Amazon
The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K Fisher
M.F.K Fisher left America for France in 1929. The author tried true French cuisine for the first time in her life, a turning-point which marked the beginning of a venerable career as a food and travel writer.
In this glorious memoir, Fisher tells the story of her life through the meals she’s cooked and consumed. A treatise on loss, survival, love and the importance of dining alone, it’s a book that will make you fall head over heels for gastronomical writing like never before.
Buy now £8.37, Amazon
