#LeMillRecommends 5 feminist reads for summer 2025
Every summer, while you’re booking flights and preparing for your next tropical getaway, there’s always that one book that makes the cut for your carry-on. It’s the battle of the best summer reads? Vacation read? Beach read? Call it what you will. Word is, the publishing world works overtime just to deliver its best for your holiday stack. And if you, like a certain sharp-tongued Miss Lizzy Bennet (from Pride and Prejudice), are partial to stories led by complex, clever women, this one’s for you.
Here are five feminist reads that centre women’s experiences, perspectives, and rich inner lives. Toss them in your hand luggage, you won’t regret it.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi, the Iranian-American author and professor, delivers a powerful read with ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’, part memoir of her life in post-revolution Iran, part gripping portrait of the Islamic Revolution and its everyday impact. It’s also a moving look at the secret book club she formed with her students, where banned novels sparked surprising connections to their own lives as women under an oppressive regime. And at its core, it’s a love letter to fiction, to the way stories can comfort, challenge, and quietly rebel.
Need a break from the family chaos on vacation? Keep this one close, we promise it’s the perfect escape.
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
In her essay collection My Body, Ratajkowski dives into the messy terrain of how her looks have shaped her life—her relationships, career, and inner world. It’s a slightly muddled, poetic debut, but the message comes through loud and clear: beauty isn’t a shield against self-doubt or heartache. If anything, it can stir up even more insecurity. Because, pretty privileged or not, women everywhere are subject to scrutiny and exploitation in a world that’s still very much run by patriarchy and capitalism. It’s the kind of sharp, introspective read that pairs perfectly well with sun-soaked afternoons and solo café breaks on your summer getaway.
All Fours by Miranda July
Miranda July’s ‘All Fours’ redefines what middle age looks like for women today. With her sardonic voice and deep curiosity of human intimacy, the novel follows a semi-famous artist who sets out on a cross-country drive from LA to New York. Just twenty minutes in, she veers off course, checks into a nondescript motel, and begins a temporary reinvention—one that unfolds into a far more unexpected journey of creative and sexual freedom. It’s the kind of daring, funny and deeply human story you’ll want to toss in your summer bag and devour in a single sitting.
Good Girl by Aria Aber
Aria Aber, the celebrated young poet and now a major new voice in fiction, delivers a gripping debut about the protagonist Nina, daughter of Afghan refugees navigating a year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discovery. Set in a Berlin that cannot outrun its racial history, it’s a sharp, electric portrait of the artist as a young woman. We recommend starting this one on a long flight, and you’ll be too hooked to notice the hours go by.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
Through the lives of three women, thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko—Breasts and Eggs dives deep into womanhood, bodily angst, and motherhood with raw, surreal intensity. In this two-part novel, Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami offers an intimate, unfiltered look at modern womanhood in Tokyo, as each of these women wrestles with societal expectations, personal doubts, and the search for futures they can finally claim as their own. It’s the kind of honest storytelling that makes for perfect company on long summer train rides or when the scenic views make you feel reflective.
