Thematic Reading List:Summer
Our teen summer reading list includes essential summer settings. Recommended towards ages 13 and up.
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Camp So-and-So By: Mary McCoy Twenty-five girls are invited to attend the mysterious Camp So-and-So over the summer where they work with their cabin mates to compete in the All-Camp Sports 7 Follies. |
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Girls of July By: Alex Flinn Told from separate perspectives, four girls, Britta, Meredith, Kate, and Spider, only two of whom had met before, spend an unforgettable July with Spider’s aunt in the Adirondacks. |
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Girl Out of Water By: Laura Silverman When her aunt gets into a car accident, Anise is forced to leave her friends and surfing behind to spend the summer in Nebraska to help care for her cousins, and by doing so, forms familial bonds and new friendships that challenge her feelings of abandonment by her mother. |
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Happy Messy Scary Love By: Leah Konen Olivia plans to spend her summer in the Catskills, binge-watching horror movies and chatting with her online friend Elm. But, things get complicated when she sends Elm her best friend’s picture, and she runs into the last person she thought she would ever see in real life. |
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Harlem Summer By: Walter Dean Myers In 1920s Harlem, sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis, an aspiring jazz saxophonist, gets a summer job as an errand boy for the publishers of the groundbreaking African American magazine, “The Crisis,” but soon finds himself on the enemy list of mobster Dutch Shultz. |
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In a Perfect World By: Trish Doller When her mother has the chance to establish an eye clinic for the poor in Cairo, Egypt, seventeen-year-old Caroline reluctantly gives up her plans for a summer spent with her best friend and boyfriend and instead moves to Cairo, where she encounters a culture and city that enchants her and a charming boy who challenges her thoughts on love, faith, and privilege. |
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We Were Beautiful By: Heather Hepler Fifteen-year-old Mia’s scarred face is a constant reminder of the car crash that killed her sister, but a summer at her grandmother’s Manhattan apartment and new friends help her find happiness again. |
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We Were Liars By: E. Lockhart Spending summers on her family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer. |
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When Dimple Met Rishi By: Sandhya Menon When Dimple Shah and Rishi Patel meet at a Stanford University summer program, Dimple is avoiding her parents’ obsession with “marriage prospects,” but Rishi hopes to woo her into accepting an arranged marriage with him. |
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