Anne unboxes the 2026 Minimalist Summer Reading Guide

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel, and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

This week, I’m sharing an excerpt from our 2026 Summer Reading Guide live unboxing. Our 15th guide and its corresponding unboxing are out in the world and available now to readers everywhere. If you don't have yours yet, visit modernmrsdarcy.com/srg, that's for Summer Reading Guide, to get in on our summer reading action.

[00:01:00] To mark this, our 15th guide, today I'm inviting you to listen in as I tell you all about the minimalist picks from this year's guide. We've been talking about Summer Reading Guide unboxing around here since 2018, when we held our first one. During unboxing, I go through every book in the Summer Reading Guide and tell you why, out of the hundreds of books I considered including in the guide that year, these are the ones I landed on. What makes them interesting? What is each story like? What kinds of readers might they appeal to? Those are the questions I'm answering. And during unboxing, I talk about all the books in the guide, and I do that in order, category by category.

In today's excerpt, our partners at Studio D have grabbed what I have to say about the six titles in this year's minimalist guide so you can listen in. This year, those books are The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh, Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan, Sisters of a Halved Heart by Nayantara Roy, Land by Maggie O'Farrell, The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders, and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

[00:02:04] If you've already received your guide as a member of one of our communities or as an a la carte purchaser, I hope you're enjoying it and are enjoying curating your summer reading list. If you've not yet gotten your guide, you can do that now or any time with instant digital delivery. Your à la carte purchase or membership also grants you access to that video unboxing of the entire guide, not just the six titles we're previewing today.

Our Summer Reading Guide isn't about persuading you what you should read this season. That is not what we're about here. It's not what we do. I am not here to tell you how you should spend your precious reading time. I am here to help you, as I am able, determine how you might spend that precious reading time in a way that you feel really good about.

And this year, our reading retreat theme was born of the desire to come alongside you as you discover potentially good books for you that let you escape into new worlds, and enrich your life in meaningful ways, and find satisfying and joyful reading experiences all summer long.

[00:03:05] This year's guide includes 35 new for 2026 releases publishing between April and August that I have read every word of. They've been organized ... Uh, why the passive voice? I have organized them into offbeat and a little bit whimsical categories to help you think differently about what books may be right for you this summer.

I've included our popular For Fans Of backlist recommendations for every title, Awesome on Audio picks, Reading Retreat best practices from our whole team, and a splashy anniversary feature looking back on 15 years of our Summer Reading Guide. I hope today's episode gives you an exciting preview of our 15th guide. To get the whole thing, go to modernmrsdarcy.com/srg for Summer Reading Guide. That's modernmrsdarcy.com/srg.

As we did last year, we are also offering the guide professionally printed, delivered straight to your mailbox in the US. These are shipping out now. If you want one, visit our shop at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop and order yours.

[00:04:09] We took pre-orders on this. If you pre-ordered, you're getting one, but Will Bogel ordered several hundred extra printed guides. If you're lucky, we will still have one in stock for you, but if you want one, please don't wait. Go order that now at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

We also have retreat-worthy merch in that shop, like our cozy new sorority-style sweatshirt that I've been dreaming of offering you all for years, a brand-new hat that I hope brings a smile to your face, it sure did to mine and to others when I wear it, restocked book darts, stickers, totes, and more at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

All right. Without further ado, let's get to the books.

[00:04:51] Next, we have The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh from Pamela Dorman on May 19th. Walsh writes these distinctive kinds of relationship-driven thrillers like Laura Dave and Gillian McAllister, if you know those writers. And this one is part mystery, part love story.

And like several books in this summer's guide, as you'll hear, it asks, "Can we ever really know the ones we love?" This is also about the power of first love, and asks this related question: "What if you move on after the love of your life disappears, but then that person comes back when you didn't think they would?"

So here's what happens. In 2010, Carrie marries Johan on a Thailand beach. Even though she hasn't known him long, she's sure he's the love of her life. But before the wedding night is even over, authorities raid their wedding and arrest him for a drug crime. It is seriously giving Brokedown Palace, if you ever were traumatized by that movie like 20 years ago.

[00:05:47] So, eventually Johan, who thinks he's going to be in prison basically for forever, begs her to leave him there, she should move back to the UK and get on with her life because she's a kickass surgeon-in-training, she has a promising future. He wants a good life for her, even if it's one without him.

So flash-forward, 12 years later, it's 2022, she's married with six-year-old twins, and she's looking up rentals for a work trip coming up, and on Airbnb, there's Johan as an Airbnb host in Sweden. And she's never once looked him up. She didn't want to torture herself, and she knew if/when he got out, he would contact her, but he didn't. He's alive and well. He's living in his native Sweden. He never breathes a word. She wants answers. Like, what happened? And she's going to get them. And I inhaled this so fast because I wanted to know what happened.

[00:06:41] GINGER HORTON: I can't wait for this next category, though, because... now you're speaking my summer language.

ANNE: Well, I'm glad to hear it. Here's what I did with the categories this year. I really wanted to do something a little more fun. In some of our older guides, we just had categories that were a little more bonkers, but for that to work, I felt like we needed a lot of categories that were very niche and bonkers.

And so, as is always the case, many of these books could have been sorted into multiple categories. In Seaside Stories, we have romance, family saga, romance, mm, literary fiction, but we put them here in Seaside Stories instead.

We're going to start with Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan, out from Putnam on May 26th. Sometimes, I don't know if this happens to you, but sometimes I think, "You know what I really want right now? An Annabel Monaghan novel." And I picked this up when I was in that kind of mood, and it did not disappoint.

[00:07:39] When I'm feeling that way, I want to see big-hearted, likable characters living in worlds I want to spend time in who are going to deal with their big stuff, or at least most of it, before the story's over. And I loved Dolly. Annabel Monaghan says in her notes, "Thank you to the woman named Dolly who came through the signing line at one of my events, and I went, 'Dolly, what a nice name!'"

Dolly here is 39, pessimistic about romantic love, but bursting with love for her family and friends. She has understandable abandonment issues. One thing she learned early is love is fickle, but debts stick around. Her dad tried to, last-ditch effort to make her mom stay was to invest in this expensive business venture her mom believed in. They're still paying off the loan. Her mom's long gone.

Dolly is not thrilled to be back in Whitfield, Rhode Island, her hometown, for the summer, but her family needs her. They are already struggling in all the ways when the house catches on fire, and suddenly they need 50 grand for a new roof right now.

[00:08:43] So enter Stuart Whitfield. He is handsome, local, most eligible bachelor who is publicly humiliated when Page Six shares photos of his cheating fiancée. What's worse, she's cheating with a Yankee, and everybody in Whitfield is Red Sox fans. So right after the bad news breaks, Dolly rescues him by stumbling upon him in his hour of need and changes his tire. The paparazzi snap a photo. They say that he's rescuing her, but the press is fantastic.

So as things go in such books, he wants to know, can Dolly help him out for the whole summer? Because he has a PR problem that she could be amazing for. She says, "Sure, pay for my roof," and they make a deal, and then Dolly catches feelings.

I loved the scenery, the relationship they build just tiny exchange by tiny exchange, the family fish business, and also Dolly is baking as love for others and also therapy for herself throughout the book. And I just found it so fun and soothing to read about.

[00:09:45] We're going to start with a book club book. We're reading this in July, Sisters of a Halved Heart by Tara Roy, out from Algonquin on June 2nd. My reading journal says, "Gah, I love this." When the story opens, Mira is just arrived back in Brooklyn from London. She fled there several years ago to get away from her half-sister, Joy, who betrayed her in dramatic fashion.

Something I think Roy does really well here is make the situation believable. Because it sounds big in headlines, like how could that end up happening? And I feel like she sells it. Joy just wants things to be okay again, whatever that means, and Mira is like, "Nope, there is no..." Like, "Are you... No, there is no way. Don't you know what you did to me?" That's where each sister is. We slowly learn what happened and where things stand now. Their elderly father, whose health is not great, is a big factor in their dynamic.

[00:10:40] This story has a really strong sense of place. It's so atmospheric. Many, many real locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan are name-checked, and I Googled probably every single one. I cued up the numerous referenced songs and mapped all the real locations. And also this one has minor characters that feel more fully developed than you see in many novels. I really enjoyed that as well. There are platonic and romantic love stories, not just the love triangle at its core, which is what we get with those sisters.

It's set in the literary world, as Mira works for a literary magazine, like a really, like, niche, fresh literary magazine with a lot of cachet right now. And there's a really believable exploration of how the sisters seek to move forward after the betrayal.

There's a literary mystery threaded through the pages. Mira works at that magazine, and a debut novel that is stunning ends up on her desk. The author's anonymous. She feels like it was sent to her as a message, like a very personal message. And figuring out who wrote it and why is a big part of the story.

[00:11:47] Oh, Ginger, you know I have mixed feelings about epilogues, and I can't wait to talk about this one with you. I know many of you despise epilogues. Some of you really love them. I was just like, "Ugh, dang. I can't wait to talk about it." So discussable. That's a big reason it's our July Book Club selection.

GINGER: Can't wait.

ANNE: Let's talk about Maggie O'Farrell. Land is out from Knopf on June 2nd. This is inspired by O'Farrell's great-great-grandfather, who worked as a laborer for Ireland's Ordnance Survey not long after the Great Hunger in the mid-19th century.

In Land, her ancestor becomes Tomás, a skilled mapmaker who works with the Ordnance Survey. It's 1865. He's brought his son Liam along. The goal is to map the whole of Ireland. And they're working for British colonialists. They are brutal masters, the Brits.

[00:12:41] But as their work nears completion, Tomás stumbles upon an enchanted spring in a magical little copse, and when he comes out, he is changed, and the impact touches every character and rolls down through the entire book.

If you love O'Farrell, you'll see a lot of her hallmarks here. She excels at giving a bird's-eye view of her characters' lives and their relationships. Here we have the main characters' perspectives, that of all the family members, but also those of an unborn baby, a talking fish, the family dog, a skylark, a house. She also has this gift for portraying these moments where you can see how the characters are orbiting each other. You can see the near misses, and you can see how they could connect, if only, but the characters themselves do not see it.

[00:13:34] The writing is lush and gorgeous. And there is so much here that is deeply life-affirming, but it's also consistently devastating. There is so much sorrow and sadness. This is also a diaspora story. I really enjoyed it. Talking about it makes me want to read it again.

Next, we have The Great Wherever, a book club pick by Shannon Sanders out from Henry Holt on July 7th. This is a debut and a ghost story, but not in the way you might think. Our main character is Aubrey. She's 32. She's broke. She's fresh off a breakup. It actually happens in the early pages. Oh, you do not feel for the guy. What a jerk. She's grieving her dad's death, and then she is stunned to find out that when her dad died, he left her his share of the family farm in Tennessee. What she doesn't know is that the instant she gained an interest in the farm, she became extremely interesting to four meddlesome, judgmental ghosts who are deeply invested in that property and now track her every move.

[00:14:37] Much of the story is told from the perspective of the ghosts who are... I mean, they're so funny. I love the ghosts. And they provide welcome levity to what at times is a dark story. But the reason the ghosts track her every move is... well, they explain it to you. The moment a relative is designated a farm inheritor, the rooms of their minds belong to the ghosts. Like the ghosts can enter them. They say it's like a key turning in the lock. The ghosts also describe this as watching the best reality TV, seeing what Aubrey and her ilk are up to.

So Aubrey travels to Tennessee to connect with these family members she's never really known. She sees the farm. She considers an offer from a big, bad corporation. The family is aghast she would consider selling, but she thinks it could be the answer to her money troubles. And while that story is unfolding in the present tense, the ghosts are unspooling the history of the land and how they came to haunt it. This is so discussable, which is why it is our August Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club selection.

[00:15:33] Next, we have Whistler from Ann Patchett. This story begins with a chance encounter at the Met that reunites 53-year-old Daphne with a man she hasn't seen since she was nine years old. That's her former stepfather, Eddie.

Eddie vanished from her life after the two were in a terrible car wreck together, and much of the book is finding out what happened minute by minute during that car wreck. It sent them both to the hospital, they landed on different floors, and by the time they checked out, Daphne's mother had filed for divorce from Eddie, and Daphne would not see this man again for 40-something years. And she's never understood why. Her mother would never talk about what happened. But after bumping into Eddie, the two are overjoyed to be in each other's lives again, and there's this real joyful sense of making up for lost time, and Daphne learns what really happened.

[00:16:27] There's lots of art and books in these pages. Daphne is an English teacher to high school girls. She loves her job, the books, and the girls. Eddie is an editor for a big five publisher, and Daphne's mother used to be a publicist who long ago married one of her authors who's terrible and so much fun to read about.

This story is so finely textured. Like, when we were walking Daisy, I found myself telling Will in detail about a collection of rabbit paintings appearing in these pages. I also Googled lots and lots of Hockney.

Now, the horse on the cover is only in the novel for a couple of pages. It's not a horse book. The horse is a horse and also a symbol. And because it's a symbol, I had this terrible moment. I know many of you have big feelings, whatever kind of feelings, but big feelings about Ann Patchett novel endings. And at first, I thought she was doing her ending out of left field thing. I was really worried. But I was very happy with the way this book ended.

[00:17:24] And I have been itching to read this again since about a week after I finished it, which might have been about the Christmas holiday. I think that's high praise. Maybe it's not the book for you, maybe it is, but for me, I think it's going to be best of the year material. Not the single best, but like top 12, I think.

Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed that snippet from our 2026 Summer Reading Guide unboxing. To get your digital copy of the guide right now and enjoy the full recording of our unboxing, visit us at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

And if you'd like to order your copy of the professionally printed magazine version of the guide and check out all our new merch, visit modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Follow our show on Instagram at @whatshouldireadnext and tag us in your summer reading posts and stories. We want to see what you're reading.

[00:18:19] That said, we do like to honor those who have made the investment in our team and our work by purchasing the guide or joining one of our membership communities. Please remember that the 2026 Summer Reading Guide is exclusively for our members and a la carte purchasers, and please avoid spoilers when sharing about the Summer Reading Guide on social media or elsewhere online. Thank you for supporting the work we do.

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[00:19:04] Thank you to all the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager Ginger Horton who unboxed these books with me for today's episode, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at Studio D Podcast Production.

Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.