Passport? Packed. SPF? Slathered. All that’s left is the most essential travel companion of all: a very good book (or five).
Whether you're sun-dazed on the Amalfi coast or cooling off in a Parisian park with a citron pressé, there’s something uniquely indulgent about reading on holiday – no deadlines, no distractions, just you and the story. From cult-classic novellas to steamy modern love affairs, our 2025 edit of summer reads has been handpicked to suit every kind of Euro escape. Expect glamorous affairs, poetic introspection, and more than one narrator spiralling under the Mediterranean sun.
These are the titles we’re tucking into our carry-ons, stuffing in our straw totes, and pulling out beach-side. Warning: they may lead to impromptu bookstore visits and long, wine-fuelled conversations with strangers. Below, find your literary itinerary.
1. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
Arguably the definitive Euro summer read, this cult classic was penned by French writer Françoise Sagan when she was just 18. First published in 1954, it follows the sun-soaked holiday of Cécile, a precocious 17-year-old, and her charming, hedonistic father – until their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of his late wife’s best friend. A tale of desire, jealousy and the cruelties of youth, it’s recently found new life through Kaia Gerber’s Library Science book club and an upcoming film adaptation by Durga Chew-Bose, starring Lily McInerny and Chloë Sevigny.
2. Butter by Asako Yuzuki
A literary phenomenon in Japan, Butter is inspired by the real-life case of a woman accused of seducing and murdering wealthy men with her cooking. But this isn’t true crime – it’s a slow, simmering novel about gender, appetite, and shame. When a female journalist begins visiting the accused in prison, what unfolds is part obsession, part investigation, part portrait of hunger in all its forms. Yuzuki recently visited Australia and New Zealand for the 2025 Auckland, Melbourne, and Sydney Writers' Festivals, where she discussed the novel's international success and the transgressive pleasures of food.
3. Rytual by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson
For anyone who’s ever been seduced by beauty marketing – this one's for you. Rytual peels back the high-gloss façade of the beauty world to reveal something far more unsettling beneath. Melbourne poet Marnie Sellick introduces us to a young woman who lands a dream job at a cult beauty brand – only to find herself drawn into the gravitational pull of its alluring, all-powerful founder. But is it just branding, or something more insidious? Equal parts sharp and seductive, this is a story about image, influence, and the uneasy thrill of belonging.
4. Brutes by Dizz Tate
Set in the shadow of a Florida megachurch, this debut is told from the collective voice of a group of teenage girls whose idol, Sammy, has gone missing. It’s about coming of age in the heat and haze of suburbia, where spirituality, sexuality and superstition blur. Think The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project. Tate has written a feral, electric book about girlhood’s power and peril.
5. Antiquity by Hanna Johansson
For fans of Call Me By Your Name and Bonjour Tristesse – Antiquity follows an unnamed narrator, a lonely woman in her thirties, who falls in love with chic older artist, Helena, after interviewing her for a magazine. Her obsession sees her join Helena and her teenage daughter, Olga, on holiday in the Greek city of Ermoupoli. At first, the narrator is seethingly jealous of Olga, but soon, however, this shifts to desire, at the prospect of becoming someone's first, if perverse, lover.
6. Bluets by Maggie Nelson
A lyrical meditation on the colour blue and all that it comes to represent – longing, grief, eroticism, intellect. Nelson’s Bluets is not a novel, not quite memoir, not quite philosophy, but something between all of them. Like her seminal work Argonauts, it plays with form and genre; each paragraph a numbered fragment that builds on the last. Essential summer reading if you want to fall in love with words and colours again.
7. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
No holiday reading list would be complete without Ferrante. If you’ve never cracked open the Neapolitan Novels, let this summer be the time. The first in the series introduces us to Lila and Elena, childhood friends in a working-class neighbourhood of Naples. Their bond is tender, brutal, jealous, and lifelong. It’s impossible not to get swept away in Ferrante’s world. Even Rachel Patton in The White Lotus couldn’t put it down – sunbaking poolside in Maui with My Brilliant Friend in hand.
8. Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter
Fashion journalist and curator Charlie Porter turns inward for his first work of fiction – a quiet, painterly novel about rebuilding. When the protagonist inherits a remote cottage in Nova Scotia, he retreats there to make sense of grief, identity and the tangled threads of family. There’s an attentiveness to detail here – of textiles, weather, meals – that reads like balm. Ideal for anyone craving solitude and introspection this summer.
9. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Another new release: Vuong’s long-anticipated second novel is a kaleidoscope of grief, memory, and queer longing. Set between post-war Vietnam and contemporary America, The Emperor of Gladness is told in a fractured, dreamlike style that makes the ordinary feel mythic. With Vuong’s signature lyricism, this book pulls you into the soft violence of love and survival.
10. Sex and Lies by Leïla Slimani
This collection of testimonies from Moroccan women – gathered by Slimani during a return to her home country – is unflinching, intimate, and radical. Through their stories, a portrait emerges of a society caught between repression and resistance. Paired with Slimani’s own reflections, Sex and Lies reads like a manifesto for bodily autonomy. A bold, necessary read for the long, hot days of summer.
11. The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne
One I just read recently, this memoir from Joan Didion's nephew, Griffin Dunne, is an easy read and one that propels you into the world of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles. There's plenty of name dropping when it came to growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood, and a highly intimate account of family tragedies, but all with a wicked sense of humour.
12. Acid for the Children by Flea
Also in the memoir stack is that of Red Hot Chili Pepper's bassist Flea. His 2019 book Acid For The Children is so revealing and raw – you get such a sense of his cheeky humour, his jazz-inflected prose, and the fun, danger and mayhem he partook in as a raucous adolescent in 1970s and 80s L.A. It's less an account of his days as a RHCP member, and more a window into his life before the fame – meeting Keidis, growing up in a bohemian, music-obsessed household, and the loneliness that came with always feeling he was a little different.
13. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The latest from the Daisy Jones & The Six author drops us into the orbit of a 1970s interior designer to the stars. There's retro glamour, sweeping romance and a bittersweet look at the passing of time. It's already a #1 bestseller and should follow in the footsteps of her other beloved novels as modern classics.
14. Sunbathing by Isobel Beech
A RUSSH favourite, Beech’s debut is a meditation on loss, solitude and the slowness of healing. Set in a Tuscan farmhouse, it’s the kind of book that soaks in – tender, sparse, and deeply human. If you’re craving space to breathe, to think, to feel something quietly profound – this is it. We also chatted to Beech last year about her own favourite reads.
15. What I Ate In One Year by Stanley Tucci
Food, memory, and wit – Tucci chronicles a year of meals in this intimate culinary diary. Expect anecdotes from film sets, family kitchens, and European getaways, all told in his signature charm. A perfect companion to your own summer feasting, we think.
16. Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley
This short story collection from the journalist and novelist behind The Truth About Her offers sharp, funny, melancholic portraits of women on the cusp – of heartbreak, of reinvention, of clarity. Maley writes with a light touch and a journalist’s eye, making these stories perfect to dip in and out of between swims.
17. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
Hailed as one of the freshest new voices in Australian fiction, Brickley’s debut maps queer love, creative ambition and cultural friction across cities and decades. It's layered, sexy, and soaked in music references. Think Zadie Smith meets Sally Rooney... in a dive bar.
18. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Levy’s scorching novel of mother-daughter entanglement, sunstroke, and sexual awakening is a must for the season. Set in a blistering Spanish village where a mysterious clinic promises cures, Hot Milk is equal parts fever dream and philosophical probe. The book was also recently adapted as a dreamy film, which you can catch in select cinemas across Europe (in case you want to watch it after you've finished reading).
19. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The 2024 Booker Prize winner and #1 Sunday Times Bestseller, Orbital follows six astronauts as they circle the Earth aboard the International Space Station. In Harvey’s slim, hypnotic novel, characters look down on war-torn landscapes, glowing cities, and the vast sea, they reflect on what it means to be human. An expansive, poetic read.
20. Mr Salary by Sally Rooney
If you're not much of a reader but still want some bound-together pages to throw into your beach bag, Rooney’s short story about Suki and Nathan – childhood family friends with unresolved tension – is a concentrated dose of her signature themes: unspoken desire, complicated love, emotional restraint. A perfect 40-minute read, best enjoyed in one small sitting.
21. Ruins by Amy Taylor
This taut and addictive debut novel set in Athens was recently optioned for film with Vanessa Kirby and Sebastian Stan already set to play its leads. It's a provocative, voyeuristic novel about a couple who, hoping to reconnect during a summer in Athens, become entangled with a mysterious young Greek woman – an encounter that sends their relationship spiralling into unexpected and explosive territory.
22. The Trio by Johanna Hedman
A novel of intimacy, nostalgia and youth. The Trio follows Thora, August and Hugo – inseparable as teens in Stockholm – whose lives become complicated by a shared summer in Paris and a secret that fractures their bond. Told from alternating perspectives across a decade, Hedman captures the ache of trying to hold onto something already slipping away.
