Best Beach Reads 2025

A famous painter shoots her husband five times and never speaks again. A therapist becomes obsessed with uncovering her motive. One of the most satisfying thriller twists of the decade. You will read this in a day. You will stay up too late.

A wedding on a remote Irish island. Someone dies. But who — and who wanted them dead? Foley sets this up perfectly, rotating through guests who all have reasons. The island setting is everything for a summer read.

On their fifth anniversary, Nick Dunne's wife Amy disappears. The novel that defined the domestic thriller genre — unreliable narrators, ugly marriages, and a twist that made readers physically put the book down mid-sentence.

Four retirees solve murders. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are better characters than most thrillers produce. Osman writes with warmth and genuine wit. The best book to make you laugh and think simultaneously on a sunlounger.

Alex and Poppy have been best friends for a decade, taking annual vacations together — until something happened two years ago and they haven't spoken since. A romance structured around travel that is genuinely perfect for reading while travelling.

A Hollywood legend, now in her 80s, finally agrees to tell her story — and chooses an unknown journalist to tell it. What follows is glamour, tragedy, love, and the kind of storytelling that makes you forget you're lying on a beach.

Millie takes a job as a live-in maid for the Winchester family. Something is very wrong. McFadden's domestic thriller is perfectly paced and delivers its twists with maximum efficiency. One of the bestselling thrillers of 2023.

Daphne's fiancé left her for his childhood best friend — who happens to be her new roommate's ex. A perfectly calibrated romantic comedy about what happens when the wrong people become the right people.

Dragon riders, war college, forbidden romance, and a plot that genuinely moves. Perfect for a long-haul flight — 500 pages that feel like 200. The romantasy phenomenon that got millions of people reading fantasy in 2023.

A lone astronaut wakes up with no memory of his mission. A puzzle-box sci-fi that is also the funniest, warmest novel Weir has written. Beach-read energy in a sci-fi body — the central relationship is one of the decade's best.

Kya Clark, the "Marsh Girl," raises herself in the North Carolina marshes — and becomes the prime suspect in a local murder. A murder mystery wrapped in a coming-of-age story wrapped in a love of nature writing. One of the bestselling books of all time.

A woman finds a library between life and death where every book is a life she could have lived. Haig writes about regret and possibility in a way that feels true without being heavy. The ultimate "feel good on the beach" book that's actually about something.