Books We Recommend This Summer

Summer is here; the season that pulls sunscreen from the back of cabinets, fills coolers the night before, and slips a book into every carry-on bag. These are the recommendations from the people who adore books, your Al Jalees team.

Here are 10 must-read books our team recommends for you

As work tends to slow down for some, and heat becomes scorching, readers cave in and seize the opportunity to cosy up in an air-conditioned room and do what they love best; read! Perhaps we find books in their cars, nightstands, or even shopping bags. Readers don’t miss a chance to indulge, if not in reading, then in holding a book, smelling one, or simply being comforted by one.

Whether your TBR is already long or you’re new to reading, our team has some great recommendations for your summer vacation. Five team members, each mentioned two books, and together we curated a list of our favorite books for you! Check this out.

Rana recommends

01 — East of Eden

Classic Fiction · Multi-Generational · American Literature

By John Steinbeck

Spanning generations across California’s Salinas Valley, East of Eden is Steinbeck’s most ambitious work — a retelling of Cain and Abel woven through real and fictional lives, and a meditation on whether we are truly capable of choosing good.

She added, " A witty masterpiece and an absolute must-read, the kind of novel that stays with you in a way very few books manage to. Steinbeck’s third-person narration gives the story a deeply personal quality that makes the fictional feel entirely true, and he captures so many characters with such uncanny precision that you grieve when you have to leave them. It has drama, history, war, poverty, deceit, heartbreak, and most importantly 'love'. Please just read it and let me know your thoughts". 

02 — The Shadow of the Wind

Gothic Mystery · Literary Thriller · Historical Fiction

By Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Set in post-Civil War Barcelona, a young boy discovers a book by a forgotten author — only to find that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of his work, and that the author’s fate is far darker than he ever imagined.

Rana expressed, "One of the most dense novels I have read, yet utterly compelling from the very first pages — a masterpiece in language, style, and sustained suspense. Filled with symbols, dry humour, action, and the full range of human emotion woven together so tightly you can’t pull them apart, it is officially the first novel I have ever given a five star rating".

Amritha recommends

03 — A Thousand Splendid Suns

Literary Fiction · Historical Drama · Women’s Stories

By Khaled Hosseini

Set against thirty years of Afghan history, this novel follows two women from different generations whose lives become bound together through circumstance and shared suffering — a story of endurance, sacrifice, and love that persists even in the most devastating conditions.

Amritha expressed,"The first book that ever made me cry, and the only work by this author I have ever been brave enough to pick up. The raw human nature in these pages is so beautifully and honestly written that it stays with you long after you’ve closed the cover, and while he is without question a phenomenal writer, I made a promise to myself after finishing it that I simply cannot let him destroy my mind again". 

04 — Chasing the Boogeyman

Crime Thriller · Psychological Mystery

By Richard Chizmar

Blurring fiction and memoir, this novel follows a fictionalised version of the author returning to his hometown in 1988, only to find it gripped by terrifying murders rendered with such eerie true-crime texture that the whole thing feels disturbingly real.

Amritha delightfully shared,  " I have always taken pride in staying one step ahead of a thriller but this book’s twist made me gasp out loud, and while it isn’t groundbreaking by any conventional measure, it caught me completely off guard in the best possible way, which almost never happens".

Lolwah recommends

05 — The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Contemporary Fiction · Coming-of-Age

By Mark Haddon

Narrated by fifteen-year-old Christopher, a boy with an exceptional and profoundly literal mind, this novel begins with a neighbour’s murdered dog and unfolds into part detective story, part emotional odyssey into truths about his own family no one had prepared him to find.

Deceptively simple on the surface yet genuinely rich and moving underneath, it is a story about perspective and the particular courage it takes to navigate a world that doesn’t always make sense to you and quietly unforgettable in the best way.

06 — The Brothers Karamazov (Summer Goal)

Classic Literature · Philosophy · Spiritual Drama

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky’s final novel follows three brothers and their dissolute father through a story that spirals from family conflict into murder, faith, and the deepest questions of human existence — free will, suffering, and what it truly means to live meaningfully.

She exclaimed, " My personal summer goal, held with both excitement and a healthy respect for the undertaking. It demands genuine patience and rewards all of it generously in return. I can tell some books you read for pleasure, some to be challenged, and some have simply been waiting for you for a long time. This is one of those".

Amro recommends

07 — The Metamorphosis

Classic Fiction · Existential · Absurdist

By Franz Kafka

Following a man who wakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect, this slim novel is not really about the transformation. It is about what happens when the world around you simply adjusts and moves on without you.

Kafka says more about alienation and the invisible weight of being needed but never truly seen in a hundred pages than most novels manage in five hundred. Short enough for a single sitting, strange enough to stay with you for years.

08 — Charisma on Command

Self-Development · Social Psychology · Practical

By Charlie Houpert

A practical guide that dismantles the idea that charisma is something you are born with, replacing it with a clear framework of presence, confidence, and genuine connection that anyone can build with intention.

It doesn’t ask you to perform a version of yourself that isn’t real, it asks you to understand yourself well enough that showing up fully becomes natural. Honest, readable, and genuinely useful.

My recommendations (Salma)

09 — The God of Small Things

Literary Fiction · Postcolonial · Family Drama

By Arundhati Roy

Set in Kerala in 1969, Roy’s Booker Prize-winning debut follows the Ipe twins as a single devastating event reverberates across their lives — a novel about caste, forbidden love, and the quiet weight of small things that determine everything.

The language feels almost sculpted, intimate and epic at once, filled with grief and beauty that linger long after the last page and refuse to leave quietly.

10 — Mother Mary Comes to Me

Contemplative Fiction · Quiet Literature

By Arundhati Roy

A quieter, more interior read that asks you to slow down and find the profound in the texture of ordinary moments, earning its place on any summer list because it rewards exactly the kind of unhurried attention this season makes possible.

Best read with the windows open and nowhere pressing to be, because sometimes the books that stay with you the longest are the ones that arrived most quietly.

From us to you,we hope these books find you in the best of places this summer, whether that’s a beach chair, a cafe table, a long flight, or simply your own couch with the windows open. Each one was chosen with you in mind, and we mean that genuinely. Read slowly, read freely, and enjoy every bit of your summer. You deserve it.

Collected and written by Salma
Edited by Rana