19 Coastal Grandma Books That Feel Like You’re Living in a Nancy Meyers’ Movie

Alice Storm hasn’t set foot on her family’s private island off the Rhode Island coast in five years, not since she was cast out of the family that built America’s most powerful tech empire. But when her larger-than-life father Franklin dies suddenly, Alice is dragged back into the fold, only to discover Franklin orchestrated one final challenge from beyond the grave: an inheritance game that traps the entire family on the island for a week, each sibling forced to complete his strange and very personal assigned tasks before they see a dime. To make things even messier, Alice has just had a one-night stand with the gorgeous stranger who turns out to be her father’s right-hand man. Think Succession with a Rhode Island summer storm, simmering romance, and decades of buried secrets, all from a writer making a confident leap from historical romance into contemporary fiction.

Three powerhouse historical fiction writers teamed up for this multi-generational mystery that hops between 1899, 1957, and 2019, all set inside the same gently crumbling Newport mansion. In present day, Andie Figuero arrives at Sprague Hall to produce an episode of a reality renovation show, only to discover the elderly heiress in residence has secrets she’ll do anything to keep buried, including refusing to let anyone near the old boathouse. As the cameras roll, the house starts revealing the stories of a young music teacher in the Gilded Age, a 1950s heiress drawn to all the wrong men, and a murder that’s been hiding in plain sight for over a century. The definition of a coastal grandma read in every sense.

Set in the days leading up to the Great Fire of 1846, this is the story of three remarkable Nantucket women whose lives intersect during one of the island’s most catastrophic moments. Eliza Macy is a whaling captain’s wife quietly drowning in financial trouble while her husband is years out at sea. Meg Wright is a pregnant free Black woman fighting to move her family’s cobbler shop to a coveted Main Street location. And Maria Mitchell (a fictionalized version of the real-life astronomer) runs the island’s Atheneum while keeping the truth about her heart firmly to herself. When a fire tears through the densely packed wooden buildings, the three are thrown together in ways that force them to decide what’s worth saving and what they can finally let go. Pack it for the ferry.

Hannah, Maya, Blue, and Renee have been best friends since childhood, four girls with chaotic home lives whose summers in Montauk were the only place they ever felt safe, until one terrifying night the summer after graduation changed all four of their lives forever. Twelve years later, the women reunite in Montauk for one last summer at the rental house they’ve been hiding from, hoping to mark their thirtieth birthdays with some kind of closure. What unfolds instead is a tender, propulsive, beautifully written novel about female friendship in your thirties, the secrets that almost end it, and the bond that pulls these four back together when everything else falls apart. The book equivalent of a long weekend at the beach with the women who’ve known you longest.

After thirty-five years serving as the Chief of Police on the island of Nantucket, Ed Kapenash’s heart can no longer take the stress. But his plans to retire are thwarted when, with only three days left to serve, he receives a phone call. A 22-million-dollar summer home, recently purchased by the flashy new couple in town, the Richardsons, has burned to the ground and their most essential employee gone missing. With the town up in arms, the Chief has no choice but to postpone his retirement and take on the double case.

When the Butler sisters learn they’ve inherited their beloved grandma Betty’s beach house in South Carolina, they have mixed emotions. To put it mildly. For Lana, there’s no other option but to sell the beach house. Overburdened Yvonne already has priorities being her mother’s sole caretaker. Her advice: put it on the market and move on. Then there’s Tami. She can’t let her sisters just unload their past without at least one last trip to the Sea Islands. Ultimately, they don’t have a choice. If they’re to collect, they must reunite and renovate their grandma’s bequest.

When Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn—she’s 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 here alone, and determined to have one last splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and possible disaster except for, well, Phoebe. Which makes it that much more surprising when the two can’t stop confiding in each other.

As New York City’s fashion it-girl, Lola has been living her dream. But when her career comes to a screeching halt after a very public snafu, everything Lola has worked for starts to go up in flames. And when notorious culture critic Aly Ray Carter writes a scathing exposé, it feels like Lola has lost everything. Fleeing to the Hamptons to escape her mistakes, she expects to spend her summer carefully rebuilding both her confidence and her brand. Instead, she looks over the trimmed hedges to see none other than her rival and newest neighbor: Aly Ray Carter.

Traci Eddings is the widowed owner of the St. Cecelia hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days, even as staff shortages and financial troubles threaten to ruin it. Traci has one summer season to turn it around, but new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threatens to come to light, and the tragic death of one of their own brings Traci to the brink of despair. Traci has her back against the pink-painted wall of this beloved institution and it will take all the wits and guts she has to see wrongs put to right, and maybe even to find a new romance along the way.

In the summer of 1977, Victoria’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, where the two friends become “summer sisters.” Now years later, Vix is working in New York. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their friendship has faded. But when Caitlin begs Vix to be in her wedding, Vix agrees because she wants to know what happened that last summer.

Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he’s met the love of his life—and no, it’s not Joy—she’s heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone else…

Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be overrun by tipsy revelers as Winn prepares for the marriage of his daughter Daphne to the affable young scion Greyson Duff. Winn’s wife, Biddy, has planned the wedding with military precision, but arrangements are side-swept by a storm of salacious misbehavior and intractable lust.

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Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years. Daughter of one of the most storied families of the 20th Century, Margaret Ives invites them to compete to tell her story. But she is only giving each of them pieces of it. Pieces they can’t put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

Blythe Benedict is content. Her life didn’t end when her marriage did. In fact, she’s more than happy living in her comfortable house in Boston, working as a middle school teacher, and raising four wonderful children. But no amount of that drama could change the family’s beloved annual summer trip to Nantucket. Blythe has always treasured the months spent at her island home-away-from-home, and has fond memories of her children growing up there. But this summer’s getaway proves to be much more than she bargained for.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she’s been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation, she moves from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Ellery Wainwright and her husband, Luke, were supposed to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary together at the luxurious Resort at Broken Point in Big Sur, California. But now she’s traveling solo. To add insult to injury, there’s a wedding at Broken Point scheduled during her stay. When Ellery discovers the dead groom, she realizes that she is not the only one whose future is no longer guaranteed. Everyone at Broken Point has a secret. And everyone has a shadow. Including Ellery.

Highland Beach, the oldest historically Black beach community in America, was founded in the late 1800s by the son of Frederick Douglass. Inside this community is Olivia Jones’s legacy. But Olivia’s legacy comes with thorns—intertwined are secrets of her aunt’s death; a controlling grandmother; and a father who wants to rebuild the family he rejected decades ago. In the midst of tense family drama, Olivia must decide if she wants to return to the beautiful life she’s created in Sag Harbor—or achieve her dream of having a family and home to call hers in Highland Beach.

Frankie and George have been best friends since they were eight years old, and over the years they’ve passionately, impulsively clashed and come back together more times than they can count. But the morning after Frankie’s rehearsal dinner, her fiancé leaves her with nothing but a note saying he can’t marry her. Enter George, who proposes a wild solution: take her nonrefundable honeymoon to the misty beaches and rainforests of Tofino. With him. For one week. What follows is a friends-to-lovers reckoning with a lifetime of feelings neither of them has ever named out loud, set against some of the most stunning Pacific coastline you’ll ever read. Going straight to the top of your beach bag.

At 17, Ruth lost her mother to cancer, and her father, unable to deal with his own grief, shipped her off to Block Island to spend the summer with a renowned photographer named Diana Beckett. Ruth fell hard for the island, for Diana, and for Diana’s nephew Charlie. Ten years later, after another devastating loss, 27-year-old Ruth returns to Block Island with her world falling apart, only to find Charlie has a startling revelation of his own, and Diana has left her a mysterious box that turns everything she thought she knew about her past on its head. Garvey’s gorgeous, Block Island-soaked debut is the kind of book you’ll start on a Friday and finish before Sunday.