12 Vacation Books So Good, You’ll Forget What You Paid for That Flight

If you’re headed to a lake this summer, there’s no better way to romanticize it than with a Carley Fortune book. Alice spent just one summer at the lake with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took the photo of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat that changed her life. When Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice plans another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.

Summer in the City is especially perfect if you have a trip to the big city on the horizon. Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. But she’s had writer’s block for months. New York is the perfect place to write her screenplay…until she realizes her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor” Parker Warren, her hookup from two years ago. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. It’s all pretend…until it isn’t.

If you’re headed to the mountains this summer, what better way to make a thriller even creepier than reading it in a similar setting? When the cofounder of a trendy London-based tech start-up, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other. But a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.

All Fours isn’t a traditional road trip story, but it definitely takes you on a wild ride, and i’s just the entertainment you need if you have hours on the road ahead of you. A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey to reinvent her sexual, romantic, and domestic life and find a new kind of freedom.

A romantic vacation with a partner demands a book as swoon-worthy as Seven Days in June. Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer. Shane Hall is a reclusive, award-winning novelist. When the two meet at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that when they were teenagers, Eva and Shane spent one crazy week madly in love and they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years.

Wedding season is here, and this book is the perfect read between your bridesmaid duties. When Phoebe Stone arrives at the Cornwall Inn, she’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years with her husband, only now she’s alone at rock bottom. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail except for Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

If you’re tackling a solo trip this year, this book might just be better than any human companion. When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. To make matters worse, she is faced with embarking on their planned mother-daughter trip to Positano alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her.

Happy Place will make you want to hug all your friends tighter, so it’s a great read when you’re already on a girl’s trip. Harriet and Wyn broke up five months ago and still haven’t told their best friends. Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. But the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

Head back to camp, or romanticize your actual camping trip with Wildfire by Hannah Grace. Russ Callaghan and Aurora Roberts cross paths at a party, where a drinking game results in them having a passionate one-night stand. Imagine their surprise when they bump into each other on the first day of the summer camp where they are both counselors, hoping to escape their complicated home lives by spending the summer working. Will the two learn to peacefully coexist? Or did their one night together start a fire they can’t put out?

If you’re headed to a White Lotus-esque resort, this book is a must-read. After he is dramatically forced to leave a high-profile job under mysterious circumstances, Ro Krishna decides it’s time to check in for some much-needed R&R at Samsara, a world-class spa for the global cosmopolitan elite. The colorful cast of characters Ro meets harbors a murderer among them. Maybe more than one. As the death toll rises, Ro, a lawyer by training, becomes embroiled in a vicious world where nothing is quite what it seems . . . including Ro himself.

There’s nothing like reading about someone else’s family drama to make you feel better about your own on the family vacation. The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

If you’ve read so many thrillers that it’s hard to find truly thrilling ones anymore, pair this read with a backpacking trip of your own. Burned-out by both her marriage and work, Liz is desperate for an escape. So, when she plans a vacation with her three best friends, she persuades them to spend four nights camping in the stunning mountains of Norway. But as they stride farther from civilization, it becomes clear that the women are not the only ones looking to lose themselves in the mountains. If they’re not careful . . . not all of them will return.