ELLE's Summer 2023 Reads: All Of The Books Our Favourite Writers Will Be Reading This Summer

'Yellowface sees a white writer steal the unpublished manuscript of her deceased Chinese American colleague and publish it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. It's a thriller that makes you think, billed as equal parts page turner and searing social commentary. It's set to unpack the themes of racism, elitism and appropriation with dark humour and wit, as well as take readers on quite the ride with its intriguing, surreal premise.'

Yomi's latest novel The List will be published on July 20.
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'Zadie Smith is one of my favourite writers and this is her first new novel in a few years so there’s a huge buzz around it. It’s a bit of a departure from her usual sharp takes on contemporary culture as it is historical fiction. The story is about the very nature of truth. The hypocrisy and self-deception uncovered does, no surprise, still find a great number of parallels in today’s world. I’m just waiting to find myself alone on a beach for long enough to devour it.'

Lotte latest book, The Queer Parent is out now.

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'It tells the story of Jess and Josh, who meet at their Ivy League college and take an instant dislike to each other. He’s an entitled WASP-y Republican in chinos; she’s an impassioned liberal, raised by a single father and often the only Black woman in class. After graduating, they end up working at the same investment bank and realise they might have more in common than they previously thought. This novel is warm, funny and romantic but it’s also sharp and full of nuance - in some ways reminiscent of Kiley Reid's Such A Fun Age. It asks a fundamental question of these binary political times: can you love someone who doesn’t see the world in the same way as you do?'

Elizabeth's latest book Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict is out now.

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'Sugar, Baby is a book about a young twenty-something cleaner navigating life in a suburban town. She finds herself straddling two completely different (and oppositional) worlds, that of her incredibly religious mother and the one inhabited by one of her clients' daughters, who is a model and sugar baby who pulls Agnes in... It interrogates clout, desirability and pleasure. It's the perfect beach read: chaotic, darkly funny and keeps you on your toes.'

'I'm so excited about Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident. It's funny and nostalgic and the sex scenes are actually sexy... it's everything I want from a summer book.'

'I plan to spend the summer reading Annie Ernaux. Her career-long depiction of the lives of working-class women, told through the lens of her own experience, is vitally political. i will write to avenge my people is her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, taking its title from a phrase she wrote in her diary as a young woman. Her work attests to the ways in which an individual story is linked to shared histories and her documentation of personal oppression is part of a struggle for collective freedom.'

Jessica's latest book Milk Teeth will be published on June 8.

PRE-ORDER MILK TEETH HERE.

'I'm really hyped about Speak To Me by Paula Cocozza. It's a highly original contemporary novel that explores digital disconnection, memory and the possibilities of renewal.'

'I'm really excited to read Xiaolu Guo's new memoir, Radical: A Life of My Own. It's set during a year Guo spent in New York as a visiting professor, leaving her partner and child behind in London. It's about separation and longing but it's also an exploration of language – 'radical' also means the root of Chinese characters, and the book is structured like a dictionary – and more than anything, the story of a woman trying to carve out a life of her own.'

'I loved Isabella's first novel, The Parisian, and can't wait to get lost in the story of Sonia, a British-Palestinian actor living in London, who returns to Israel to visit her sister and becomes embroiled in a Palestinian production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Reading is a form of travel to places I might otherwise never go, and it's a gift to have Hammad's gorgeous, transportive prose as a guide for this journey.'

'I'm really looking forward to Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer, and having it as part of my bookclub on my newsletter The Good Chat. In a post #MeToo society we're privy to the harm so many of the artists we are fans of (or idolise) have committed and I'm fascinated by exploring not necessarily the 'correct' way to handle that, but the complexity and tension in that question, without flattening. From what I've read, this book does that brilliantly.'

Gina's latest book No Offence, But... will be published on July 27.

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'I'm very much looking forward to reading the debut novel by Khashayar J Khabushani, I Will Greet the Sun Again. It's the story of three brothers taken by night from their Los Angeles home to Iran by their father, and how they fare in a motherland they hardly recognise. On returning to Los Angeles, the youngest brother goes through the challenges of navigating a queer adolescence and reckoning with his shifting identity as a Muslim in America. It is beautifully written (I always read the last and first pages of a novel before getting stuck in), and I can't wait to be enveloped in it on a beach somewhere.'

'For me, this summer of lit is looking fire with three books I will be devouring. Firstly, the celebrated debut Rosewater by Liv Little, which is the ultimate love story celebrating love in all its different forms.'

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SHARMAINE'S WORK WITH DIALOGUE BOOKS HERE.

'I love the psychology of scammers and always fascinated by true white-collar crimes.'