Every month, BookSparks CEO, Crystal Patriarche, brings us her top picks of new releases and this summer season is bringing the heat. From thrillers she’s obsessing over to literary delights meant for the beach, these are the novels you want to make sure to scoop up in July 2025.
If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard
Hana is content with the mundane rhythm of her life—until she learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear in her ex-husband’s forthcoming novel. The ensuing midlife crisis is beyond anything she could have imagined, complete with a talking cat and a ridiculous game called Dead Body. A work of autofiction, this novel explores what happens when real life truly is stranger than fiction.
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Wes and Addie Had Their Chance by Bethany Turner
When Addie’s career as a CIA analyst and her marriage collapse, she returns to her tiny hometown to rebuild her life. Amidst her old friends is the last person she wants to see: Wesley Hobbes, her childhood sweetheart who left her at the altar—and a prominent senator. But as Addie spends more time around Wes, she realizes that he is more than the sum of their tumultous past, and there might even be hope for a future together.
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Fog and Fury by Rachel Howzell Hall
When seasoned LAPD cop Sonny Rush moves to Haven, California to join her godfather’s PI business, the worst crime she encounters is a missing dog. But when the dog’s disappearance leads to her wealthy ex and a body along a hiking trail, Sonny realizes that this small town holds secrets darker and stranger than anything she faced in LA. To survive Haven, she must question everything—or be destroyed by its secrets.
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Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
Noah and Lorelei enjoy a happy, normal life with their three children until their autonomous minivan collides with oncoming traffic on the way to a rental house in Chesapeake Bay. Their family vacation becomes an interrogation that reveals disturbing truths about what Lorelei really does for work and who is truly responsible for the accident. Both a family drama and an exploration of AI’s impact on the world, the Cassidy-Shaws must untangle a web of secrets that could bind them together or tear them apart.
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These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
Ever since being cast out of her ultra-wealthy family, Alice Storm hasn’t stepped foot in the family estate. But the death of her father forces her to return and confront the remaining family members. Alice plans to leave right after the funeral, but this plan is foiled by her father’s weeklong inheritance game. It doesn’t take long for twisted secrets to resurface, and Alice must navigate complicated relationships with her mother and siblings in order to emerge unscathed.
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American Sky by James Grady
Montana, 1960s. Under the wide open sky, Luc Ross imagines an unlimited, unbound future. But the real world gradually creeps in through clouds of marijuana and endless notices of young men “Killed in Action” in Vietnam. Tortured by the conflicts in America and within himself, Luc’s life is upended as the American Dream slips further and further from his grasp.
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Such Good People by Amy Blumenfeld
Fifteen years ago, April’s friend Rudy was arrested and incarcerated. She’s mostly left that life behind, replacing it with her attorney husband, Peter, and their three children. Then Rudy goes up for parole right before Peter’s election campaign for local office begins, throwing the campaign and their lives into jeopardy. April must make an impossible choice: protect her life with Peter or fight for the person that sacrificed everything to make that life possible.
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Where You’re Planted by Melanie Sweeney
Single mom and librarian Tansy Perkins pours all of her energy into her library and her daughter. She doesn’t have time for romance, certainly not with Jack Reid, the grouchy assistant director of the county garden next door. But when a hurricane nearly destroys her library, Tansy must move what’s left of it into one of the garden’s sheds, to Jack’s chagrin. The spark growing between them is undeniable, but a crucial opportunity to gain needed funding will test whether they will choose a planned future or a new connection.
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The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
As a child, Minerva’s great-grandmother told her tales of witches from her girlhood in 1900s Mexico. Those stories pushed Minerva to attend college and study Beatrice Tremblay, a horror author known for a novel about a witch that bears an uncanny resemblance to her great-grandmother’s stories. Set in the twisted, multilayered world of academia, Minerva must uncover the truth about the witch stalking her before it’s too late.
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The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager
Jean lives a monotonous life, stuck in a painting created by his father, Henri Matisse. Museum guests and employees pass by in a blur—until Claire. She feels a strange attraction to Jean’s painting and discovers that she can step into any painting in the gallery. Claire and Jean begin an impossible, whirlwind love affair that takes them through time and art, but obstacles both inside and outside the museum threaten to rob the couple of their newfound happiness. Will their love transcend reality or be confined by the world around them?
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The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang
Joan Liang’s life has been anything but expected. She left Taiwan for California, watched her first marriage blow up before her very eyes, and married a wealthy older American. As she ages, Joan wrestles with an eternal question: will she ever feel satisfied? In an attempt to answer this question, she opens the Satisfaction Café, a hub for conversation and mutual understanding. Like everything in Joan’s life, the legacy of this cafe is beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
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Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza
Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college until Bex disappeared, leaving Lizzie with the fragments of their friendship. Years later, Bex resurfaces as tradwife influencer Rebecca Sommers while Lizzie struggles to make ends meet as a magazine writer. When Bex calls Lizzie out of the blue with an invite to an influencing conference that could jumpstart her career, Lizzie accepts. But the conference devolves into a bloodbath when Bex goes missing and her husband is murdered, forcing Lizzie to navigate the deadly world of jealousy and betrayal to clear Bex’s name and make it out alive.
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Totally and Completely Fine by Elissa Sussman
Lauren Parker has worn many hats in her small Montana hometown, but nothing could have prepared her to be a widow. Between her pervasive grief and her daughter’s unpredictable behaviors, Lauren has never felt more lost. Then she meets handsome actor Ben Walsh on the set of her brother’s new movie, and their chemistry is obvious to everyone. But a simple fling becomes something more, and Lauren must decide whether she has room in her heart and her life to love someone again.
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Re-read
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Gus and Call may have passed their prime as Texas Rangers, but they still crave one last adventure before the American West as they know it disappears forever. The harrowing cattle drive to Montana that ensues is filled with love and loss, triumph and tragedy. This is a striking portrait of the West and the American consciousness that appeals to every generation.
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