What We’re Reading: Summer 2025 Edition

Tess Denman-Cleaver

As ever, my ‘summer reads’ are not necessarily bringing you chill beach vibes… This summer I am reading a book that has been on my list for years but feels more important than ever today. You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a collection of essays, social media posts and interviews by Alaa Abd el-Fattah – writer, thinker, and now high-profile political prisoner in Egypt. His mother Laila Soueif has been on hunger strike in the UK since September 2024 campaigning for her son’s release and for world leaders to do more to secure his freedom. You Have Not Yet Been Defeated covers the period between the Arab uprising in 2011 and 2021. I am curious to see how it resonates now, in a world changed again, but one which still sees the writer incarcerated for his thoughts.

I have also ordered The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher, which won the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize. Elif Batuman’s description of this book about a young Palestinian women living in New York as ‘bonkers’ swung it for me.

Margot Miltenberger

I’m looking forward to Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, which recently came out in paperback. Adina is an alien born in a human body in 1977, sent to grow up human and fax her experiences to the planet she came from. I wouldn’t normally pick up a book about aliens, but Beautyland is really a coming-of-age story. Adina’s observations about humanity are perceptions we all accept intuitively, only made uncanny from the perspective of a different species looking for patterns. Beautyland promises to be both light and wise.

I’m also hoping to read Miriam Toews memoir, A Truce That is Not Peace, which comes out in August 2025. Toews is the author of All My Puny Sorrows and the more well-known Women Talking, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. Toews writes tragedy with humour, her prose both funny and profound. I’m eager to see something of the life that shaped her unique books.

Alison Scurfield

After reading Lucy Rose’s The Lamb and Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone back to back earlier this year, I’ve struggled to get into anything else. Nothing has quite compared to their sinister weaving of darkly feminist narratives  and twisted character development. That’s until The Ladie Upstairs by Jessie Elland was published last month. This book has been on my radar for quite some time and when I had an early summer break recently, it was the first thing I picked up and I barely put it down. It’s eerie and disorientating but with beautifully written prose. Ropner Hall is a claustrophobic, all-consuming setting and it unapologetically puts the female body at the centre of a horror narrative. I’d love to see what Jessie Elland does next. More feral women stories, please!

Helena Davidson

I’m going to take Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie away on my summer holidays this year as I love the idea of a satirical deep-dive into the Edinburgh Fringe, and specifically, a woman getting her revenge on a man by becoming really successful. I’ve heard great things about this book and looking forward to being transported back to Summer in Edinburgh but without having to actually face the crowds myself. 

Carys Vickers

I’m not going on holiday this summer because I’ll be moving house instead. For spiritual sustenance during this life transition, I look forward to curling up with The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, notebook in hand. As life continues to get faster and busier, I’m always interested in how I can create more space for slowness and presence, and I know that JMC will have plenty of insight to share.

I’m also excited to finish reading Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst, the true survival story of a couple stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Not quite relaxing summer vibes, but it is full of sunshine and saltwater. I’m totally gripped so far.

Claire Malcolm

Summer holidays are the time for kicking back with expansive and absorbing stories. I have you covered. Look no further than Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods. In this epic we are out in the deep woods of America with generations of missing children, inebriated rich people and wandering serial killers – all circling round a children’s summer camp! In a similar vein of American splendour, Fiona McFarlane’s Highway Thirteen is also brilliant (and read her debut The Night Guest if you haven’t come across it).

The book I’m most looking forward to this summer is In Defence of Leisure by Akshi Singh who, inspired by the work of psychotherapist Marion Milner, is exploring how free time and creativity are essential for a fulfilled life.

If you like a bit of challenging non-fiction whilst basking on a sun lounger, I highly recommend Julia Ebner’s Going Mainstream – a necessary read which will help you understand why one in three people sitting round the pool believe that the Royal Family are Lizards. It’s a sobering undercover exploration of how the QAnon conspiracy alternative universe is connecting incels, anti-vaxxers, climate deniers and the Russian disinformation war to compete with reality as we know it. I like her proposal that writers might play a future role in getting ahead of fake news by predicting how the disinformation networks might spin the truth, but there are no easy answers.

Rebecca Wilkie

I have a huge pile of books to read this summer! I’ve recently picked up a copy of Maggie Shipstead’s novel 2012 novel Seating Arrangements, a tale of a wealthy family in New England over a wedding weekend in June. I’m so focussed on reading new books I often neglect authors’ backlists, and this book has been on my TBR pile for a long while – it feels perfect for my forthcoming trip to Cornwall.

I’m currently enjoying Vincenzo Lantronico’s Perfection. Recently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, this satirical portrayal of millennial hipsters (‘digital creatives’) carefully curating their life in gentrifying Berlin is sharply observed and bleakly funny.

Anfield Road captured my interest straight away, with its recognisable and evocative setting in my home-town of Liverpool. This coming-of-age tale, inspired by Chris’s own life, follows teenage Connor’s quest to carve out his own identity against the backdrop of Liverpool in the 1980s. Chris’s illustrations capture Liverpool beautifully – the iconic skyline seen from behind the dustbins, Probe Records in the rain… I was profoundly moved by this book, which I’ll be sharing with my friends and family this summer.

A book that I predict will be read beside many a poolside this summer is Florence Knapp’s The Names. It’s an engaging book with shades of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. It explores the three alternative versions of a boy’s life over 35 years – shaped by the different name he is given in each version. It’s a memorable and emotional read.