The perfect book pairings for your summer goals
Discover the perfect books to read for your summer goals, from reconnecting with your body (not shrinking it) to relearning your self-worth.
Remember when 'summer goals' meant a juice cleanse and a countdown to a bikini body? We don't do that anymore. This summer, the goals are softer, smarter, and a lot more interesting: reconnecting with yourself, fuelling your career, getting financially fluent and nurturing creativity.
Instead of a diet and fitness plan designed to punish and diminish, we've paired six of the goals you'll actually want to set yourself with the books that'll help you get there. No spreadsheets required. Just good reading and a slightly better relationship with yourself by September.
Books for reconnecting with your body (not changing it)
This one's not about a fitness plan, and it's definitely not about a diet. It's about actually living in your body again — feeling strong, feeling present, noticing what it can do rather than what it looks like in a mirror.
We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here by Megan Jayne Crabbe
From the bestselling author of Body Positive Power (you might know her as Bodyposipanda), this one goes beyond body image to everywhere we quietly shrink ourselves — heartbreak, sexual shame, toxic productivity. Split into five parts (Body, Heart, Sexuality, Life, Self), it's candid, poetry-laced, and reads like your big sister giving you full permission to take up space again.
Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard by Sarah Ann Macklin
A leading nutritionist takes on optimisation culture (the dopamine hacks, the protocols, the cold plunges) and makes the case that the missing ingredient isn't another rule, it's radical self-compassion. Backed by real science on gut health and neuroplasticity, with a plan that's about rebuilding trust with your body rather than managing it into submission.
Books for fuelling your career (by women who've done it)
The girls are locking in. Whether that's finally learning to negotiate, becoming the person who speaks up in meetings or just getting sharper at your actual job, summer's slower pace is prime time for quiet self-investment.
The Squiggly Career by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
Ditches the career-ladder metaphor for good and gives you five practical skills — values, super strengths, confidence, networks, future possibilities — to navigate a career that zigzags instead of climbs. One of the most recommended career books of the last few years, with exercises you'll actually want to do (yes, even the 'vision board' bit).
Buy from Bookshop.org: US // UK
How to Fail by Elizabeth Day
Built from her hit podcast of the same name: part memoir, part manifesto on how failure at work, at love and at fitting in teaches us more than success ever does. Funny, candid, and full of the kind of 'oh thank god it's not just me' moments that make it a firm favourite for anyone rethinking what 'getting it right' even means.
Books for living more authentically
Cutting the performance. Saying the true thing instead of the palatable thing, wearing what you actually like, building a life that looks like you instead of like your group chat's aesthetic.
What Am I Missing? by Emma Reed Turrell
A psychotherapist (and co-host of Elizabeth Day's Best Friend Therapy podcast) identifies four 'blind spot' personality profiles (the Gladiator, the Bridge, the Hustler, the Rock) that quietly distort how we show up in relationships and at work. Readers consistently call it eye-opening rather than preachy, which is exactly what you want from a book that's basically holding a mirror up to you.
This Is Fine by Poorna Bell
Fiction pick: Padma's ten-year relationship is "fine," until an ultimatum about starting a family blows the whole thing open, right as she's dispatched to spend the summer with her troubled teenage niece. A warm, funny, genuinely moving novel about a woman who's spent her life prioritising everyone else finally working out what she actually wants.
Books for getting financially fluent (minus crypto bro energy)
Not 'get rich' energy, just the goal of actually understanding your money instead of vaguely avoiding your banking app. Budgeting, investing, or just building the confidence to ask for more.
Deeper Than Money by Chloe Elise
Less a numbers book, more a guide to the emotional baggage that sits underneath our spending: the shame, the guilt, the 'I'll just check my balance later.' Aimed squarely at women who've spent years being handed restrictive, guilt-driven financial advice and want something that actually reframes the relationship instead.
How to Be a Rich Old Lady by Amanda Holden
A brilliantly no-jargon guide to investing from the founder of financial education company Invested Development, who left a career in investment management specifically because she saw who the system was — and wasn't — built for. Demystifies retirement accounts, index funds, and tax rules while keeping the tone like your smartest friend explaining it over brunch, not a lecture from a man in a suit.
Buy from Bookshop.org: US // UK
Books for nurturing your creativity
Not for a side hustle, not for the algorithm. Making something with your hands or your head for the sheer pleasure of it, the way you did before 'productive' became the only acceptable adjective.
Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren
An award-winning, internationally bestselling novel about art, ambition, and the ideas we let gather dust. Martin runs a small publishing house and has boxes of unfinished manuscripts (his own 'collected works') while his oldest friend Gustav has become a famous painter. A rich, slow-burn read about what it actually costs to finish the thing you started.
Buy from Bookshop.org: US // UK
How to Live an Artful Life by Katy Hessel
From the author of The Story of Art Without Men: 366 short daily reflections drawing on quotes and wisdom from artists like Marina Abramović, Tracey Emin, and Zadie Smith, each paired with a small creative prompt. Built for exactly the 'five minutes of creativity a day' energy this goal calls for; no studio or 'talent' required.
Books for setting boundaries without the guilt spiral
The goal of saying no and meaning it. Protecting your time, your energy, and your peace without writing three paragraphs of justification first.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
Still the reigning champion for this goal: a therapist's practical, step-by-step playbook for saying no without the apology essay attached. If you've never actually been taught how to hold a boundary (most of us haven't), this is where you start.
Buy from Bookshop.org: US // UK
Why Did You Stay? by Rebecca Humphries
A Sunday Times bestselling memoir from the actress whose then-boyfriend was famously caught kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner on camera. In the aftermath, one question from a stranger online stuck with her: 'If he was so bad, why did you stay?' This book is her answer: sharp, unflinching, and surprisingly funny, on why 'good girls' end up in controlling relationships and how she reclaimed her sense of self-worth afterwards.
Buy from Bookshop.org: US // UK
Six goals, twelve books and not a single one about getting smaller. That's the kind of summer glow-up we can get behind. Want more recommended reads for your TBR pile? Check out our other blog posts below.
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