8 Young Adult Summer Books to Help Your Students Escape
The best summer reads scream summer. Vacations, ice cream, hot lazy days, no homework, the beach, camp . . . freedom. Summer reading is the ultimate escape, and it’s become an industry unto itself in the larger reading world (this has long been Steph’s annual summer reading guide). So why not encourage our students to get a jump start on summer with young adult summer books?
Young adult summer books have a carefree feel to them that is often missing from summer reading targeted at adults. School is out, and these teenage characters have 8–10 weeks of complete freedom with minimal responsibility. Perhaps this is why young adult summer books show up so often on adults’ summer reading lists. Despite our best efforts to recapture them, we’ll never get back to those years when our job was simply to soak in all summer had to offer. The older we get, the less our responsibilities respect the academic calendar.
Whether it’s the end of the year and your summer countdown has begun or it’s November and your students need a break, our recommendations for young adult summer books will grab your students’ interest. Summer reading may be its own season on the calendar, but we all need to escape once in a while! These eight young adult summer books are heavy on the escapism, which can be just what our students need, no matter what time of year it is.
Young Adult Summer Book Recommendations
Spending the summer in Italy sounds like a dream, right? Not for Lina. Her mother just died, and her mother’s dying request was that Lina go to Italy and meet the father she doesn’t know. As if that isn’t bad enough, it turns out that Lina’s father lives in a cemetery.
Despite her initial plans to escape, Lina sticks around. She receives her mother’s journal from her time in Florence, where she met Lina’s father and fell in love. Lina meets a local teenage boy who shows her around Florence and helps her make sense of the journal. She goes for long runs and bike rides in the gorgeous Italian scenery. And, of course, she eats gelato.
Welch’s novel is a light, fluffy read, perfect for summer. And while there’s a summer romance, the story is much more about Lina coming to understand herself and her parents in new ways. It’s sweet and wholesome in a way that feels refreshing. And while we haven’t seen the 2022 Netflix film version, the trailer makes us want to travel to Italy ourselves!
Students who enjoy spending the summer with Lina in Italy can extend their summer travels to Ireland (Love and Luck) and Greece (Love and Olives) with new protagonists.
First off, a warning. This one’s definitely for your older readers. That being said, it’s the perfect summer read. Ever Wong wants to spend her summer dancing, but her parents send her to Chien Tan, a summer-long program in Taipei marketed to parents as a place to learn Mandarin and prepare for medical school. In reality, Chien Tan is actually Loveboat, a summer-long free-for-all with minimal adult supervision and plenty of time to break all the Wong family rules.
Sure, there’s plenty of summer drama and fun to indulge in (and oh boy, is there a mess to clean up at the end), but the independence gives Ever the opportunity to figure out who she is apart from her parents and come into her own, something your students will definitely relate to, if in far less dramatic ways.
Morgan Matson’s Catalog
Elin Hilderbrand is probably the Queen of the Summer Read, and if Morgan Matson was a bit more well-known, we might nominate her for the title Queen of the YA Summer Read. Five of her six books for young adults take place in summer (Take Me Home Tonight is the only one that doesn’t), and her middle-grade debut takes place at summer camp. We’ve already recommended The Unexpected Everything, and we’re recommending the rest now.
Amy hasn’t driven since her dad died. Now her mom’s making her move to Connecticut and she has to drive cross-country from California to get there (since her mother went ahead without her). Enter Roger, the son of a family friend who is processing his own loss. Roger drives, Amy navigates, and when they detour from Amy’s mom’s carefully planned itinerary, their trip becomes an epic adventure, growth opportunity, and way to find the closure they both need. All, of course, aided by fantastic playlists. What could be more perfect for summer than a good road trip story?
Charlie Grant is doing everything she can to make her older sister’s wedding weekend perfect. After all, it’s the first time all four siblings have been in the family home together for a long time, and her parents are about to sell the house. Sure, she’s got college decisions to make and a crush to deal with, but all that can wait. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong (rom-com style), and Charlie has to manage the chaos. However, she learns a lot about her family and realizes that letting go of how things used to be might not be such a bad thing.
When Taylor’s dad receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, he asks that the family spend one last summer at their family lake house. Taylor’s usual tendency is to run when things get too hard, but this is something she can’t escape from. Instead, she has to take the time to face broken family relationships, broken friendships, and even an old childhood romance. Despite the sad premise (and you’ll definitely need a tissue or ten), the sweet moments Taylor has with her father are worth it.
When Emily’s best friend Sloane bails on the summer they had planned together with no explanation, Emily thinks her summer is ruined. Before she met Sloane, Emily was shy and reserved, but Sloane brought her out of her shell and helped her to enjoy all that high school life had to offer. Two weeks after disappearing, Emily receives a letter from Sloane: it’s a list of thirteen tasks she has to complete that summer. Kiss a stranger. Go skinny-dipping. Steal something. Dance until dawn. Share some secrets in the dark. As Emily works to complete the items on her list, she has an unbelievable summer and realizes she doesn’t need Sloane to be her amazing, confident self.
To be perfectly honest, the cover alone made us fall in love with this one. Iced coffee is definitely part of a good summer day!
Dimple is Stanford-bound, but first she talks her parents into letting her attend a summer web development program. But there’s something she doesn’t know . . .
Her mom, who has always been obsessed with helping her find the “Ideal Indian Husband,” has arranged a marriage between Dimple and an Indian boy named Rishi, who will also be attending the summer program and is thrilled to meet Dimple. Their first meeting does not go well, but as the summer progresses and they work together to win the summer program’s grand prize, Dimple and Rishi get to know each other better, and discover their very different personalities balance each other out.
The teens-on-a-college-campus setting conjured up vivid memories for Steph of her first days on the USC campus and will appeal to rising seniors getting ready for this transition in their own lives.
We’ve already shared our love of Lord’s first novel, Tweet Cute, so how could we not share a title that takes place at summer camp? When Abby takes a DNA test to settle a bet with a friend over which of them is more Irish, she is surprised to learn she has a sister. A sister who’s an Instagram star. A sister she’s never heard of despite having both of the same parents.
Abby makes plans to attend the summer camp where Savannah (her sister) works, only to find that her secret love interest Leo (with whom she has had a Big Embarrassing Incident) works in the camp’s kitchen.
There are lots of messy relationships to work out in this one (sister, parents, crush), but as is the case with most good stories, it’s an opportunity for Abby’s self-discovery and growth, and the camp setting brings back nostalgia for those of us who spent any part of our summers in cabins by the lake.
Hopefully, these recommendations will get your students in the summer mood (no matter what time of year it is). And we won’t tell if you just want to add these to your own summer reading list. Are there any young adult summer books we’ve missed? Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.
Looking for YA books to suggest to your students or use for your own FCF activity? Check out the YA book section of our website for all our recommendations.
