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Our picks for the best beach reads of summer 2024
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If you’re heading out on vacation this summer, a good beach read is an absolute must. Whether you prefer to take along paperbacks or an e-reader like the Kindle, you’ve got thousands of engrossing options to choose from this year.
There are so many books out there that it can be hard to figure out where to start. Lucky for you, we’ve sifted through and read some of the best novels and stories available to bring you our picks for the best beach reads of 2024.
Our picks for the best beach reads of summer 2024
Whether you love to dive into high-octane spy thrillers or complicated meet-cutes, you’ll find something exciting to dig into. Grab your e-reader or a bookmark and get ready to chill beachside with a great story. These page-turners are on fire.
(Want to upgrade your summer reading experience with a new e-reader? Check out our picks for the best e-readers for 2024.)
“Kill For Me, Kill For You”
Amazon
This fast-paced psychological thriller is the perfect book for reading with your toes in the sand. You’re going to need it to keep calm with a story that ends up being beautifully stressful.
In Steve Cavanagh’s harrowing novel, two grieving women form an unlikely pact to get revenge. Wendy and Amanda meet by chance in New York City, only to discover they share a common torment: the men who devastated their families were able to walk free. Fueled by rage and loss, they make a secret arrangement to kill each other’s tormentors.
But while both women make their plans to move forward, the plot thickens in ways neither anticipates. Full of dizzying twists and shocking revelations, this book will keep you guessing until the final paragraph. Can the pair pull off the perfect murders?
“The Chaos Agent”
Amazon
Looking for plenty of action with a splash of romance and exotic locales? The latest entry in Mark Greaney’s Gray Man thriller series is perfect escapist fare. Assassin Court Gentry just wants a peaceful life with his lover Zoya when they’re dragged into a game of cat and mouse.
Someone is eliminating the world’s top AI researchers, and an old acquaintance wants Court’s help extracting a Russian scientist from the kill list. But merely being seen with him puts a target on Court’s back. Now they’ve got to stay a step ahead of another assassin with seemingly unlimited resources.
If you’re a big thriller fan or find yourself going back to the classic Bond books over and over, you’ll fall in love with this series. Give “The Chaos Agent” a read.
“People We Meet on Vacation”
Berkley via Amazon
This novel, by the author who literally wrote the book on beach reads (or at least a book titled “Beach Read”), is a romance that’s unlike the others you might have read. Even though it didn’t come out in 2024, it’s still an Amazon bestseller and a favorite among those who like to hit the sand with good reading material in tow.
The book follows Poppy and Alex, two best friends who took a trip together every summer throughout college, up until their falling out near graduation. After not speaking to each other for two years, Poppy reaches out to Alex proposing they take one more vacation together.
As they travel, memories and feelings from their past friendship begin to resurface. Poppy has always had unspoken romantic feelings for Alex that she hid to preserve their friendship. It soon becomes clear Alex feels the same way. If you’ve ever experienced a friendship that turned into something more, you’ll feel right at home here.
“Good Material”
Amazon
This exploration of heartbreak and self-discovery is perfect for your next beach vacation. Andy is reeling from his breakup with Jen while struggling to figure out where it all went wrong. Now homeless, career-less, and watching his friends move on with life, he’s determined to solve the mystery of their failed relationship.
We get both Jen and Andy’s sides of the story in a series of flashbacks. Their beginning as a couple contrasts sharply with the misunderstandings that led to their relationship’s end. The book is packed with touching looks at a love that went sour for so many sometimes inexplicable reasons. It’ll have you reflecting on your own relationships all the way through.
“Took a minute to get into, then it hit hard,” says one verified Amazon reviewer. “So real. So good.”
“Sugar, Baby”
Amazon
Agnes is a 21-year-old who lives at home and works as a cleaner. On the weekends, she goes out and spends money she doesn’t have while looking for ways to distract herself from the life she doesn’t want to live. When she meets Emily, the daughter of one of her clients, she discovers the world of “sugar dating,” or dating rich men for money. Immediately, Agnes is intrigued and hops down the rabbit hole.
When Agnes immerses herself completely in this new world of compensated dating, her mother Constance kicks her out. She then moves in with Emily and a group of other sugar babies, and navigates dangerous, toxic relationships that do little to fill the hole in her life.
It’s a difficult read, but an engrossing one that you won’t soon forget.
“It Ends with Us”
Amazon
It’s a good time to read this bestseller from Colleen Hoover: The movie adaptation starring Blake Lively is airing this June. In this romantic drama, Lily has worked hard to build the life and business she wants in Boston. When she feels sparks with Ryle, a gorgeous but complicated neurosurgeon, it seems too good to be true.
Ryle has a rule against dating, yet Lily becomes the exception. But as their relationship deepens, she wonders what made him so commitment-phobic. The reappearance of her first love — Atlas, a kindred spirit from her hometown — throws Lily’s new life into turmoil as well. Eventually, she must make a difficult choice that she’s not sure she’s prepared for.
“This Summer Will Be Different”
Amazon
This steamy romance is one that’s best enjoyed beachside. You’ll want to cool off after you read it.
Lucy travels to her best friend Bridget’s beach house on Prince Edward Island every summer. Each visit, she finds herself drawn more and more to Bridget’s younger brother Felix, no matter how much she tries to resist.
Their chemistry is off the charts, leading to secret trysts she wishes she could stop having. But with Lucy and Felix’s tangled history and family bonds at stake, their electric connection gets complicated. Their feelings start to deepen and they soon find it difficult to keep their affair a secret.
“The Housemaid”
Amazon
Need a twisty thriller you’ll be thinking about long after you head to the beach? “The Housemaid” will do nicely.
Millie is an ex-convict looking for a fresh start as a live-in housemaid for the wealthy Nina Winchester. At first, the job seems promising. Nina is friendly and welcoming when Millie moves in. But Nina’s behavior soon takes a disturbing turn. She gives Millie confusing instructions, sometimes failing to mention critical information like her daughter’s severe allergy. Millie soon suspects her new boss may be unwell, or that maybe there’s something else hiding beneath the surface.
There are so many secrets to unravel as the novel wears on.
“A Court of Thorns and Roses”
Amazon
We suspect you may have already heard of “ACOTAR” (as it’s known on TikTok). But if you haven’t given this 2020 novel a read yet, we recommend sitting down with it on the beach this summer.
In this formidable fantasy, 19-year-old Feyre is a hunter who kills a wolf in the forest, which angers a mysterious fae who swears revenge. Feyre is taken captive to the land of Prythian, ruled by immortal faeries. She learns her captor Tamlin is not a beast, but one of the faeries that once ruled her world.
As Feyre adjusts to her new home, her feelings for Tamlin go from hatred to intense attraction. An ancient evil threatens Tamlin’s world, and Feyre realizes she must find a way to destroy it if she wants a chance at being with Tamlin.
“One of Us Knows”
Amazon
Kenetria Nash, diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, gets a second chance when she accepts a job as caretaker to a historic Hudson River home. But as she settles in, she realizes she has no memory of how she got there in the first place.
When a storm traps her with strangers, including the man who ruined her past, Ken’s world is changed again. After the man turns up dead, she becomes the prime suspect.
To prove her innocence, Ken has to work with all of her alternate identities. Together, they battle to remember the truth about Ken’s past and the mysterious Kavanaugh Island before they lose everything.
“Just for the Summer”
Amazon
Justin is down on his luck when it comes to the dating scene. When he meets a woman, they break up and his partner finds a new soulmate. When he matches with a woman who claims the same fate, they joke about dating to “cancel out” their curses. That’s when nurse Emma moves to Minnesota for the summer to give it a shot.
Neither expects to actually fall for the other. But when Justin unexpectedly becomes a guardian to his siblings and Emma’s toxic mom causes drama, the pair begin to develop feelings for each other.
But all of this was supposed to be just for the summer. Will Justin and Emma stay together even though they swore they’d part at the end of the season? You’ll have to read to find out.
“The Women”
Amazon
Set during the Vietnam War (1965), 20-year-old nursing student Frankie McGrath enlists in the Army Nurse Corps. Frankie quickly becomes part of the chaos of war — a stark contrast to her sheltered upbringing in sunny California. She’s forced to figure out how to navigate life and death daily while getting closer to the soldiers she treats.
Soon, Frankie grows into a seasoned veteran. But the real battle proves to be returning home to a very different America than the one she left behind. As she reconnects with loved ones and immerses herself in the antiwar movement, she learns important facts about humanity and herself.
MIAMI – Miami Beach police have confirmed that a human head discovered on Key Biscayne earlier this week belonged to Victor Castaneda Jr., a 19-year-old swimmer who disappeared while saving his younger sister.
The grim discovery was made Tuesday morning by a worker on the beach behind the Key Colony II Ocean Sound condominium at 251 Crandon Blvd.
Authorities identified the remains as Castaneda, who went missing Saturday after being caught in a rip current at South Pointe Beach.
According to police, Castaneda and his younger sister were swimming when they were pulled out by the current.
Castaneda managed to help his sister to safety, but he was unable to escape the powerful waters himself. Attempts by nearby Good Samaritans to reach him were unsuccessful.
The family announced on social media that a memorial service for Castaneda will be held at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at South Pointe Beach.
Police are continuing their investigation into the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Castaneda’s remains.
Portfolio
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In her new collection of columns from the Wall Street Journal, “A Certain Idea of America” (to be published November 19 by Portfolio), Pulitzer Prize-winner Peggy Noonan writes about the history and character of our nation, the remarkable figures who personify the best of America, threats to the social fabric, and the “better angels” of our democracy.
Read the foreword below, and don’t miss Robert Costa’s conversation with Peggy Noonan on “CBS Sunday Morning” November 17!
“A Certain Idea of America” by Peggy Noonan
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Foreword
This is not a book about the day to day of our national political life. It is simply about loving America and enjoying thinking aloud about it.
The columns gathered here are varied in terms of subject matter. They are about the things that endure, and things that deserve to be encouraged. A number of them are about spectacular human beings. As my editor and I read through the past few years of Wall Street Journal columns, if I said, “I really enjoyed writing that,” or she said, “I loved this,” or I said, “This was important to me,” it was in. If not, out. We chose about eighty from more than four hundred. We found ourselves most attracted to themes of history and its pleasures.
The book is divided into seven parts.
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” is mostly about great figures and artists of the twentieth century, from Billy Graham to Oscar Hammerstein, from Queen Elizabeth II to Senator Margaret Chase Smith of the state of Maine, and from Tom Wolfe to Bob Dylan, with some side trips to the nineteenth century and the generals of the American Civil War. Looking back on a career of now fifty years, I see that from the beginning what I have loved most, what has most moved me, is writing honest praise.
“I Don’t Mind Being Stern,” on the other hand, is about having fun, as a public writer, taking as big a stick as you can to people and things you are certain deserve it. The U.S. Senate changing its dress code to accommodate a senator who enjoys dressing like a child? Get the stick. Vengeful Prince Harry? Ditto. We were certain a recent Broadway production of Cabaret deserved our stern attention, in a piece whose last line is its summation: “Life Isn’t Merde.” We castigate men who aren’t gentlemen, and admonish parents who, as their personal vanity product, wind kids up to become mindless status robots. Also receiving fire are woke academics who speak garbage thoughts with garbage words. (I am sorry to use the word “woke,” which is boring and sounds merely sarcastic, but the thing is that when you say it, everyone pretty much knows what you mean.) I believe we were the first to compare contemporary social justice warriors with the practitioners of the struggle sessions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We enjoyed pointing out that the leaders of the French Revolution were, largely, sociopaths. There’s a piece written in the hours after January 6, 2021.
In “Try a Little Tenderness” we turn to love, which we posit as a very good thing. We call for artists to enter politics. We meditate, after the fire that swept the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, on the enduring presence and power of religious faith. We unabashedly love, we swoon over and wish to marry, Leo Tolstoy and War and Peace. We mourn for Uvalde, Texas. We talk about the endless drama of men and women, and instruct America that more happens every day in the office than business. Also we declare Taylor Swift an American phenomenon, and if you don’t like it you can just shake it off.
“It Appears He Didn’t Take My Advice” is two columns long. The first, on Joe Biden, was so spectacularly wrong in its central prediction that it made us laugh. Yet looking back five years, it seemed to me in its reasoning to be still oddly pertinent. The second, on Donald Trump, on the eve of the 2016 election, seems to me to have some prescience as to his central problems as a historical figure. Also in the writing of it I remember a feeling of poignance.
“On America” is about the foibles, troubles, and triumphs of our country. It includes the story of my great-aunt Jane Jane, and how, as an Irish immigrant, she came to love her new country. I’d say the general theme of this section is about keeping your poise under pressure. It includes recent college graduates, the Normandy invasion, and the spirited, against-the-grain testimony of an old-fashioned capitalist. Also included, a portrait of the dynamics that produced a political sea change: “The Protected Versus the Unprotected.”
“Watch Out” contains columns about the worries that preoccupy my mind: the dark potentials of AI, skepticism as to the character and motives of its inventors; the possible use of nuclear weapons, and the ongoing dramas in Ukraine and the Mideast.
“We Can Handle It” is about working our way, as a nation, through things that roil us, from the #MeToo movement to the abortion wars, from the creation of a sane foreign policy, to the low state of the American presidency.
This collection draws its title from the famous first sentence of Charles de Gaulle’s “War Memoirs,” most happily translated as “All my life I have had a certain idea of France.” It struck me when I read it many years ago and stayed with me because all my life I have had a certain idea of America, and from the beginning it shaped my thinking and drove my work.
What is that idea? That she is good. That she has value. That from birth she was something new in the history of man, a step forward, an advancement. Its founders were engaged in the highest form of human achievement, stating assumptions and creating arrangements whereby life could be made more: just. In the workings of its history I saw something fabled. The genius cluster of the Founders, for instance—how did it happen that those particular people came together at that particular moment with exactly the right (different but complementary) gifts? Long ago I asked the historian David McCullough if he ever wondered about this. He said yes, and the only explanation he could come up with was: “Providence.” That is where my mind settles, too.
De Gaulle said his thoughts on France were driven as much by emotion as reason, and the same for me. A piece in here dated July 3, 2019, speaks of both:
I’m not really big on purple mountain majesties. I’d love America if it were a hole in the ground, though yes, it’s beautiful. I don’t love it only because it’s “an idea,” as we all say now. That strikes me as a little bloodless. Baseball didn’t come from an idea, it came from us—a long cool game punctuated by moments of high excellence and utter heartbreak, a team sport in which each player operates on his own. The great movie about America’s pastime isn’t called Field of Ideas, it’s called Field of Dreams. And the scene that makes every grown-up weep is when the dark-haired young catcher steps out of the cornfield and walks toward Kevin Costner, who suddenly realizes, That’s my father.
He asks if they can play catch, and they do, into the night.
The great question comes from the father: “Is this Heaven?” The great answer: “It’s Iowa.”
Which gets me closer to my feelings on patriotism. We are a people that has experienced something epic together. We were given this brilliant, beautiful thing, this new arrangement, a political invention based on the astounding assumption that we are all equal, and that where you start doesn’t dictate where you’ll wind up. We’ve kept it going, father to son, mother to daughter, down the generations, inspired by the excellence and in spite of the heartbreak. Whatever was happening, depression or war, we held high the meaning and forged forward. We’ve respected and protected the Constitution.
And in the forging through and holding high we’ve created a history, traditions, a way of existing together.
We’ve been doing this for 243 years now, since the first Fourth of July and in spite of all the changes that have swept the world.
It’s all a miracle. I love America because it’s where the miracle is.
I would say of the above, welcome to my deepest heart.
You’ll see some of the U.S. Civil War here. It has been a lifelong preoccupation and followed my interest in Abraham Lincoln, whose life has gripped me since childhood. He is the only American president who was both a political and literary genius—literally, genius—and about him clung an air of the mystical. He was completely human (homely ways, off-color jokes, depressions, a writer of angry letters) and yet there was something almost supernatural in his ability to be fair, to be just, to be merciful toward his tormentors (the angry letters were thrown in a drawer). What a figure. Tolstoy thought him the greatest man in history.
Religious faith is a constant subtext here because it’s my constant subtext.
Anyway, America. With all her harrowing flaws (we have always been a violent country, for instance) she deserves from us a feeling of profound protectiveness. Our great job as citizens is to shine it up a little, make it better, and hand it on, safely, to the generation that follows, and ask them to shine it up and hand it on. I think that is often what I was trying to do. When you see this I will have been a weekly columnist in The Wall Street Journal for just shy of a quarter century. I am grateful I haven’t run out of opinions.
Excerpted from “A Certain Idea of America” by Peggy Noonan, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 Peggy Noonan.
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