Audiobook roundup summer 2025

Congratulations, The Best Is Over!: Essays

by R. Eric Thomas

If I wasn’t already an R. Eric Thomas fan for life, this collection would have clinched it: I’m not sure I have words for what it meant to me. In his sophomore book of essays, the Here for It author tells hilarious, moving, and deeply insightful tales of love, adult friendship, family, and marriage, and also therapy, Zoom funerals, working alone, COVID isolation, middle age, and his home city of Baltimore. There’s no weak link in this collection: every story feels immediate, intimate, and real. I’ve thought of “Break Room Cake Communion” and “Jericho” nearly every day since reading them. I can’t stop talking about this book. For fans of Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You and Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives..

The Hotel Nantucket

by Elin Hilderbrand

Hilderbrand’s beach reads are always enjoyable but this one is notable for introducing me to a new favorite pen. The titular hotel’s Gilded Age glory days are long gone: it’s a real dump (and in a fun plot twist—haunted!) when London billionaire Xavier Darling buys it sight unseen. The new owner hires local restaurateur Lizbet Keaton to make his hotel the best property on the island, if not the whole Eastern seaboard. And that means The Hotel Nantucket has to wow Shelly Carpenter, the influencer who’s become a national obsession for her blog Hotel Confidential. The influential critic regularly reviews hotels for her eighteen million followers and awards each property anywhere from one to five keys. The staff is energized by this audacious goal, because no hotel has ever earned five keys from Shelly Carpenter. To earn the coveted fifth key, they’ll have to do everything right. Super fun, and I especially enjoyed the ghost story element!

The True Love Experiment

by Christina Lauren

Romance novelist Fizzy Chen gets her own story in this delectable standalone follow-up to The Soulmate Equation. After another relationship ends badly, Fizzy realizes she’s in a terrible slump, in love and in writing. Meanwhile, Connor gets unwelcome news from his overbearing boss: he won’t get funding for his next nature documentary until he films a big money-maker… like a reality show. The two (reluctantly) unite to create a one-of-a-kind dating show that relies heavily on romance tropes, and also requires them to work closely together. This is one of the seasoned writing duo’s best efforts, with palpable chemistry, serious tension, winning humor, and a satisfying resolution. Open door. For fans of The Soulmate Equation and Julia Whelan’s similarly meta Thank You for Listening.

Skin & Bones

by Renee Watson

Piecing Me Together author Watson wows with her adult debut. Things are finally going well for forty-year-old Lena: she has a good job, loving relationships with her parents and daughter, and a handsome fiancé she’s set to marry in just a few weeks. But his shocking confession the morning of her would-be wedding sends her reeling, and destabilizes the once-firm foundation she’s carefully built. Close female friendships and familial relationships feature prominently as Watson unpacks the beliefs surrounding beauty, love, fatness, and faith handed down from each generation to the next. Lyrical and kaleidoscopic, Watson compassionately explores what it means to love yourself, love your body, and love others, while showcasing Portland’s rich Black history.

Trust Her

by Flynn Berry

Edgar Award-winning Berry’s standalone companion to her 2021 bestseller Northern Spy continues to explore the Irish Republican Army’s activity in the post-Brexit era. The story starts with a bang when the IRA kidnaps journalist Tessa on a remote highway outside Dublin and delivers an ultimatum: persuade her MI5 handler to become an informant, or someone she loves will die. Tessa and her sister Marian had become deeply involved with the IRA several years before, but she thought those entanglements were behind them. Now she fears for her and her son’s safety, as she knows the IRA will make good on their threats. Berry delivers a riveting spy thriller and a fascinating exploration of women’s involvement in the IRA and the subsequent impact on families, neighborhoods, and entire communities.

Run for the Hills

by Kevin Wilson

Wilson deftly combines the heavy and the light in this found family story of four scattered half-siblings who meet for the first time and pile into an old PT Cruiser to go find the father who abandoned them long ago. Wilson’s stories often feel larger than life, yet the emotional heart feels real and relatable. Quirky, warm, and bighearted, with a multigenerational cast and road trip hijinks galore. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s no spoiler to say I found this coast-to-coast adventure to be an utter delight.

A Walk in the Woods

by Bill Bryson

Renowned travel writer Bryson takes to the Appalachian Trail in this laugh-out-loud travel memoir. After returning to America after 20 years in England, Bryson reconnects with his home country by walking 800 of the AT’s 2100 miles, many of them with his cranky companion Katz, who serves as a brilliant foil to Bryson’s scholarly wit. A superb hiking memoir that skillfully combines laugh-out-loud anecdotes with serious discussions about history, ecology, and wilderness trivia. Droll, witty, entertaining.

The Road to Tender Hearts

by Annie Hartnett

Hartnett’s gift is to nestle genuine humor right alongside life’s most terrible tragedies. Here she again balances joy and tragedy, combining the comedy of a screwball road trip with a serious meditation on loss, grief, healing, and second chances. Along for the ride are a 63-year-old named P.J. who has an ailing heart and a drinking problem, his estranged 23-year-old daughter, his brother’s recently orphaned grandkids, and Pancakes, a tabby cat with unusual powers. They’re on a mission to reunite with P.J.’s old flame at Arizona’s Tender Hearts nursing home. This madcap ride manages to feel hopeful and heartwarming despite its sad subject matter.

The Stationery Shop

by Marjan Kamali

In 1953 Tehran, a young man failed to meet his betrothed in a Tehran square. Sixty years later and half a world away, the woman, now grown old, is about to discover why. This sweeping love story spans 60 years and two continents, taking the reader between contemporary New England and 1953 Tehran, thoroughly immersing the reader in the volatile political climate of 1950s Iran. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year: listen to me recommend it on Episode 194 of What Should I Read Next ("No plot, no problem!"), and we'll be reading it in the MMD Book Club in January, where we'll pair it with A Place for Us. If you enjoyed either of these books, add the other to your TBR right now.

Chirp

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

by Michelle Zauner

Indie rockstar Michelle Zauner delivers a heartfelt, poetic memoir about losing her mother and searching for her identity. “Ever since my mother died, I cry in H Mart.” So begins Zauner’s poignant story. After her mother received a grim cancer diagnosis, Zauner realized her mother’s death would also mean losing her only tie to her Korean heritage, so she sought to shore up stories while she still has time. Whether she writes about the intricacies of preparing traditional Korean dishes or a hurtful misunderstanding, she explores moments from her tumultuous mother-daughter relationship with tenderness and love, often returning to the idea that our experiences of home, family and culture are viscerally rooted in what we taste, see and hear. An honest, lyrical, and life-affirming memoir about grief, growing up, and making amends. I can’t say enough good things about Michelle Zauner’s tender memoir about love, loss, and her Korean heritage. Achingly poignant in the author’s own voice: I was grateful to hear every nuance of emotion, as well as her fluid voicing of the Korean phrases I would trip over in print. Simply beautiful.

Two Nights in Lisbon

by Chris Pavone

“Justice is truth in action” in this taut and sexy thriller from spy novel veteran Pavone. The Disraeli epigraph may initially puzzle; readers, keep turning those pages and all will become clear. Ariel Pryce wakes up on her honeymoon in a Lisbon hotel room to find her husband missing. Fearing the worst and increasingly frantic, Ariel turns to the Portuguese police and American embassy where her concern is met with skepticism: he’s a grown man and it’s only been a few hours. When they discover the couple both changed their names ten years ago, their skepticism balloons into outright disbelief—even though his kidnappers have surfaced and demanded an outrageous ransom. With the clock ticking and no help from authorities, Ariel seeks help from those she’d long since left behind in her old life—and then things get really interesting. Team member Shannan still loves The Expats most but I say this is Pavone’s best yet. Content warnings apply. For fans of Chanel Cleeton’s Our Last Days in Barcelonaand Daniel Silva’s The Cellist.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

From the publisher: "For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy—until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his."

Audiobook roundup summer 2025

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th