The 46 Must-Read Books of Summer 2025
Buzzy novels, compulsively readable memoirs, and a few guilty pleasures.
BY DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH, EMILY BURACK AND ADAM RATHE
Next To Heaven
It’s as tale as old as time: dark secrets lurk behind artfully cultivated hedge roses. In James Frey’s latest novel, Next to Heaven, four couples in the wealthy enclave of New Bethlehem, Conn. (a fictionalized New Haven) find their lives upended after a swinging shindig held by local queen bees Devon McCallister and Belle Hedges Moore goes awry. As mysteries unfold, romances begin and end, and fortunes are made and lost, there’s only one possible conclusion: someone has been pulling the strings the whole time.