Here Comes the Sun: 10 Sultry Summer Vacation Romances

If you’d like to travel to Key West (I sure would), here’s the book for you. The premise is top notch: Sarah’s unreliable boyfriend flakes on his obligation to attend Sarah’s family vacation, so she recruits the nearest available man: firefighter and dive captain (dive captain!!!) Luis. You have to love a man so inclined to help someone in need. This is a great book if you love romances that come with big families attached.

Summer in Seattle is amazing: lots of sunshine, low humidity, close to water and mountains both. And if you have friends there, like Annie does, it’s worth visiting before she moves across the globe. She wasn’t expecting to fall for Brendon, her brother’s best friend whom she remembers as a dorky kid. He’s a grown cinnamon roll now, and he uses this precious window of time to woo his childhood crush in cinematic romcom style.

Plenty of us make a vacation out of those summer weddings we’re invited to. Quinn is back in Bellbush to celebrate his best friend’s nuptials, but his uncle convinces him to stay longer and help out on Honeybells Ranch. When he meets Gerti, a newcomer to Bellbush, he may be tempted to extend his stay even longer. This one has really immersive and vivid small town vibes, which is something I definitely crave in my summer vacation romances.

I’m just going to let you know off the top: this book has a hammock sex scene. If that is not summer vacation romance in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. This fantastic entry in the Girls Trip series pairs Dr. Nicole Allen, an ambitious surgeon with her friend Benjamin Reed Van Mont. The two fake date on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, so if you’re counting the tropes this is: summer vacation, friends-to-lovers, and fake dating. With hammock sex.

This book is god-tier when it comes to summer vacation romances, and it was one of my tippy top romances from 2021. Emma, an actress on a Game of Thrones-esque show, needs a break. She goes to an idyllic estate in California, where she meets reclusive ex-hockey player Lucian Osmond. They are two people on the run from their problems who crash into each other, and it’s deliciously sexy. And there are baked goods to boot.

I often feel like Olivia Dade is writing romances specifically for me, and as a big tennis fan, this one really hit me where I live. Tess Dunn, a teacher on summer break, has a near-disaster meet cute when a rogue wave absconds with her bikini top. Sexy tennis pro Lucas Karlsson comes to her rescue, making sure she doesn’t expose herself to a beach full of people, and things just get more delightful from there.

I’m stretching the premise a little on this one because the romance is sparked at a boating party rather than on vacation. But how badly do I want to be invited to a boating party this summer? This historical romance is set in a little Caribbean town called Arroyo Blanco. There Emilia, who writes serial romances under a pseudonym, encounters Ruben, a literary darling. He’s got secrets of his own, and there’s only so long these two can banter before they start kissing.

If you’re looking for a Regency romance with summer vacation vibes, Mary Balogh’s got you covered. While many of her books are deeply emotional, this one’s comparatively light, pairing an infamous bachelor with a woman recovering from having been left at the altar. Lauren agrees to pose as Kit’s betrothed if he can give her a fun, adventurous summer. She thinks if she can break the fake engagement at the end of the summer, she can finally be free of the marriage business altogether. But you can guess how that turns out for her.

Akwaeke Emezi positively took over the literary world by publishing across genres and age groups. And their romance novel, which I want you to read without too much foreknowledge, is a megastar in their blazing literary constellation. In it, Feyi Adekola, a young widow, finds herself on a tropical island, flirting with something like forbidden love. I adore romances where the couple is solid and the rest of the world has to shift to meet them, and this is one of those.

Sometimes a summer trip is a little bit less like a relaxing vacation and more like a chance to regroup before the next big move. That’s what Iris needs, so she’s back in her childhood bedroom in Salty Cove, Maine. Her neighbor Jude is back in town too, hauling lobsters and seeking solitude. A summer fling is the perfect distraction for these two women who never wanted to be back in their hometown. But they might find what they’re seeking in each other.