16 Must-Read Books for Summer 2026, From Celebrity Memoirs to Buzzy Novels

Author, editor, and journalist Mary H.K. Choi is back with a new novel that delves into complicated mother-daughter relationships that are still filled with love. Stevie, a recent college dropout, can’t afford to make her Hollywood dreams come true, so she moves in with her mother, Moon. “Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed,” Choi writes. Still reeling from her lover (and TV husband’s) death, Moon wrestles with her grief. Meanwhile, she’s living in a glass-wall pool house in the backyard with Stevie, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three “are pulled into a messy orbit.” Although this book comes out in June, it has already found fans in Roxane Gay (who picked it for her Audacious Book Club reading list) and Michelle Zauner, aka Japanese Breakfast, who described the narrative as “Grey Gardens set against the tarnished glitz of the Hollywood C-list.”