Book Recommendations: Summerween 2026

Pride month straight into summerween? Yeah, that is us. Whether you want wilderness survival, celebrity murder, small-town secrets, or folk horror with a god in the woods, this year’s picks have you covered.

Summerween Recs

Gray After Dark by Noelle W. Ihli: Olympic hopeful Miley takes a summer job at a remote Idaho mountain lodge to train and recover from an injury. When she’s abducted on a morning run and held captive in an off-grid cabin deep in the Frank Church Wilderness, survival depends on an unlikely alliance and a very narrow window to escape. Inspired by true events. This one is relentless.

Drop Dead Famous by Jennifer Pearson: Global pop star Blair Baker is murdered onstage at her own homecoming concert. Her younger sister Stevie knows the official investigation isn’t going to be enough and launches her own, pulling in an unlikely partner with surprising leads. YA, twisty, and packed with red herrings that actually work. Fans of Holly Jackson will be very happy.

Black Point by Jacqueline West: Lucia Sorenson has no plans to leave her insular Wisconsin hometown on the bluffs above the Mississippi River. When a supposedly haunted hotel is bought by an outsider and his nephew arrives with questions Lucia has never thought to ask, old secrets start surfacing in ways the town would very much like to keep buried. Atmospheric and genuinely unsettling.

Local Gods by Melinda Salisbury: After the FBI exposes her father’s crimes, Sylvie Singer goes from mayor’s daughter to town scapegoat overnight. Exiled to the cursed West Woods, she encounters Illican, a dying horned god bound to the forest. He can offer her magic. She might be the only one who can save the town that hates her. Folk horror with serious Midsommar energy and a deeply satisfying streak of female rage.

What Happened to Those Girls by Carlyn Greenwald: Emma’s three best friends die on a camping trip she planned and wasn’t invited to. Months later, anonymous footage from that last night starts arriving and she teams up with Beck, the sister of one of the victims, to go back to the ghost town where it happened. Queer Mean Girls meets The Blair Witch Project, with a witch legend, a sapphic romance, and a bisexual autistic protagonist the narrative refuses to simplify. Oh, and Courtney Summers blurbed it.

What Happened to Those Girls

by Carlyn Greenwald
on June 30, 2026
Bookshop
Goodreads

Pretty Little Liars meets The Blair Witch Project in this harrowing thriller from the author of Murder Land, brimming with betrayal, unsettling town secrets, and a killer lurking in the woods.
Emma knows her friends all lie to her. And everyone knows Emma is the outcast of their group. She's usually fine with that, until her friends go on a camping trip that she planned...without her. The next morning, she wakes up to the news that all three of them died at the campsite.
When Emma starts receiving unnerving videos of the girls the night they died from an anonymous source, it becomes clear their deaths weren't an accident. And if this becomes a murder case, Emma will be suspect number one. Because while everyone knows she had been excluded from the plans, what they don't know is that she went to the campsite that night after all, and someone has proof.
Emma teams up with Beck, one of the victims' sisters, to return to the woods and figure out what really happened the night her friends died, uncover who is behind the mysterious videos she is receiving, and make sure that nobody can pin their murders on her. But stranded in an eerie town that doesn't welcome outsiders with a murderer on their heels, Emma and Beck just might be next…