search-icon

9 Poignant Summer Stories That’ll Give You the Same Feels as Call Me by Your Name

by  | July 9
Book on deck

The haze and heaviness of summer make it ripe for big-hearted emotions and life-changing relationships. Call Me by Your Name captures this mood perfectly, detailing the moving story of young love between Elio and Oliver during a summer in rural Italy. While there’s been talk of a film sequel, we’re likely still years away from that Chalamet and Hammer reunion. To bridge the gap, we’ve curated a list of books that evoke some of those same exquisite feelings of summertime sadness, longing, and hope.

Filthy Beasts

Filthy Beasts

by Kirkland Hamill

Following a rancorous split from New York’s upper-class society, newly divorced Wendy and her three sons are exiled from the East Coast elite circle. Wendy’s middle son, Kirk, is eight when she moves the family to her native Bermuda, leaving the three young boys to fend for themselves as she chases after the highs of her old life: alcohol, a wealthy new suitor, and other indulgences. After eventually leaving his mother’s dysfunctional orbit for college in New Orleans, Kirk begins to realize how different his family and upbringing is from that of his friends and peers. Split between extreme privilege—early years living in luxury on his family’s private compound—and bare survival—rationing food and water during the height of his mother’s alcoholism—Kirk is used to burying his inconvenient truths from the world, until he’s eighteen and falls in love for the first time.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
All the Water in the World

All the Water in the World

by Karen Raney

Maddy is sixteen. Smart, funny, and profound, she has loyal friends, a mother with whom she’s unusually close, a father she’s never met, devoted grandparents, and a crush on a boy named Jack. Maddy also has cancer. Living in the shadow of uncertainty, she is forced to grow up fast.

All the Water in the World is the story of a family doing its best when faced with the worst. Told in the alternating voices of Maddy and her mother, Eve, the narrative moves between the family’s lake house in Pennsylvania; their home in Washington, DC; and London, where Maddy’s father, Antonio, lives. Hungry for experience, Maddy seeks out her first romantic relationship, finds solace in music and art, and tracks down Antonio. She continually tests the depths and limits of her closeness with her mother, while Eve has to come to terms with the daughter she only partly knows, in a world she can’t control.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
Lie With Me

Lie With Me

by Philippe Besson

In this “sexy, pure, and radiant story” (Out), Philippe chances upon a young man outside a hotel in Bordeaux who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Thomas is the son of a farmer; Philippe the son of a school principal. At school, they don’t acknowledge each other. But they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair. Despite the intensity of their attraction, from the beginning Thomas knows how it will end: “Because you will leave and we will stay,” he says. Philippe becomes a writer and travels the world, though as this novel shows, he never lets go of the relationship that shaped him, and every story he’s ever told.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
This Tender Land

This Tender Land

by William Kent Krueger

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota’s Gilead River, Odie O’Banion is an orphan confined to the Lincoln Indian Training School, a pitiless place where his lively nature earns him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee after committing a terrible crime, he and his brother, Albert, their best friend, Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.

Over the course of one summer, these four orphans journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
Florence Adler Swims Forever

Florence Adler Swims Forever

by Rachel Beanland

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home.

Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams. Esther only wants to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there’s Fannie’s risky pregnancy—not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac—and the fact that the handsome heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence. When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth—at least until Fannie’s baby is born—and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
Something Like Gravity

Something Like Gravity

by Amber Smith

Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start. A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of her. But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to stay away from each other.

The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling in love was the last thing on either of their minds. For fans of Love, Simon and Eleanor & Park, this is a novel about a transgender boy who falls in love for the first time—and how first love changes us all.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
Lake Life

Lake Life

by David James Poissant

The Starling family is scattered across the country. Parents Richard and Lisa live in Ithaca, New York, and work at Cornell University. Their son Michael, a salesperson, lives in Dallas with his elementary school teacher wife, Diane. Michael’s brother, Thad, an aspiring poet, makes his home in New York City with his famous painter boyfriend, Jake. For years they’ve traveled to North Carolina to share a summer vacation at the family lake house.

That tradition is coming to an end, as Richard and Lisa have decided to sell the treasured summer home and retire to Florida. Before they do, the family will spend one last weekend at the lake. But what should to be a joyous farewell takes a nightmarish turn when the family witnesses a tragedy that triggers a series of dramatic revelations among the Starlings—alcoholism, infidelity, pregnancy, and a secret the parents have kept from their sons for over thirty years. As the weekend unfolds, relationships fray, bonds are tested, and the Starlings are forced to reckon with who they are and what they want from this life.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Amazon logoAudible logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoKobo logoBookshop logo
Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name

by André Aciman

And, of course, any fan of the movie should pick up a copy of André Aciman's book that it was based on, as well as the sequel, Find Me, which takes place decades after the first one.

Amazon logoBarnes & Noble logoBooks a Million logoBookshop logo

Photo Credit // Simon & Schuster

Categories // Bookish Lists • Movies

Tagged // • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Love to get lit... erary? Sign up to get the latest delivered to your inbox!
Read these articles next: