14 Spring Reads To Refresh Your Reading List This Season

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“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn’t know a thing about life.”

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Spring is the perfect time to freshen up your reading list, and this collection of spring reads is here to help you do just that. As the days get longer and lighter, we readers love looking for books that feel just as uplifting – whether that’s feel-good fiction, cosy escapes, or page-turning stories that are easy to fall into. This guide to the best spring books to read brings together a blend of new and timeless recommendations designed to match the season’s fresh, hopeful energy. If you’re looking for a spring reading list that will inspire you, comfort you, or simply help you fall back in love with reading, you’ve come to the right place. From light mysteries to romantic escapes, these spring book recommendations are perfect for anyone wanting to refresh their reading list this season. 

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Book Lovers – Emily Henry

First up on our list of the best spring reads is Emily Henry’s beloved bestseller, Book Lovers. Nora Stephens’ whole life is books. Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, for the month of August when her little sister, Libby, begs for a sisters’ trip away. Yet instead of picnics in meadows or run-ins with a handsome doctor or bulging forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish, brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times, and it’s never been cute. 

If Nora knows she’s not your ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero. But, as they are thrown together time and time again – in a series of coincidences that no editor worth their salt would ever allow – what they discover may just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves. 

Good Material – Dolly Alderton

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can’t work out why she stopped. Now he is without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, and wondering why everyone else around him appears to have grown up while he wasn’t looking. Set adrift on a sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But, Andy still has much to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend’s side of the story…

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton serves up the perfect spring read with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most renowned voices of a generation. 

Anxious People – Fredrik Backman

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death scenario, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they make themselves out to be. And all of them – the bank robber included – desperately crave some sort of rescue. 

As the authorities and media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a string of events so unexpected they can hardly explain what happens next. Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is one of the best books for springtime, all about friendship, forgiveness, and hope. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like Anxious People

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Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes

In a sleepy seaside town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her painfully empty house nearly a year after her husband’s death. Everyone in town, including her best friend Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside. Meanwhile, in New York City, former Major League pitcher Dean Tenney is wrestling with what miserable athletes call the “yips.” 

As the media storm intensifies around him, he moves to Maine and finds himself in an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house. The pair of them make a deal: he won’t ask about her husband, and she won’t talk about his baseball career. But, rules have a funny way of being broken; soon enough, what starts out as an unexpected friendship soon blossoms into an all-consuming, healing something more. 

The Most Fun We Ever Had – Claire Lombardo

When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blissfully ignorant of all that is to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents’. 

As the novel charts through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt – given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years ago – we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons’ past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile in what makes for one of the best books for spring reading.  

The Paris Apartment – Lucy Foley

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could stay with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris? Only, when she shows up, finding a very swish apartment that surely Ben couldn’t actually afford – he’s not there. 

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess begins to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbours are an eclectic bunch, and not especially friendly. Jess might have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s beginning to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s most in question. 

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Check Out Our The Paris Apartment Book Review 

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Iona Iverson’s Rules For Commuting – Clare Pooley

Every day, Iona Iverson, a stylish, opinionated, larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, rides the train to work with her dog, Lulu. Every day, she spots the same people, whom she knows only by nickname. Of course, they all never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died if not for the intervention of Sanjay, a nurse. 

This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eccentric group of people discovers that talking to strangers can teach you quite a bit about the world around you – and even more about yourself. 

The Lost Apothecary – Sarah Penner

One cold February evening in 1791, in a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose – selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her newest patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardise everything. 

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the Thames, she can’t resist investigating. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate – and not everyone will survive. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like The Lost Apothecary

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This Must Be The Place – Maggie O’Farrell

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complex life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film start given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway, Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. 

But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with two decades earlier. This revelation will send him off-course, far away from his wife, children, and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back? 

Flowerheart – Catherine Bakewell

Clara’s magic has always been wild. But it’s never been dangerous. Then a simple touch causes poisonous flowers to bloom in her father’s chest. The only way to heal him is to cast an extremely difficult spell that requires perfect control. And the only person willing to help is her former best friend, Xavier, who’s grown from a sweet, shy child into someone distant and mysterious. 

Xavier asks for a terrible price in return, knowing that Clara will give him anything to save her father. As she struggles to reconcile the new Xavier with the boy she once loved in this cosy fantasy spring book, Clara learns just how many secrets he’s hiding. And as she hunts for the truth, she instead finds the root of a terrible darkness that’s taken hold in the queendom – a darkness that only her magic is powerful enough to stop. 

Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully-brewed coffee for over a hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of this incredible offer. 

Yet the journey into the past does not come without risks. Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story is perfect for spring and explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time? 

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Check Out Our Before The Coffee Gets Cold Book Review 

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The Little Cottage In Lantern Square – Helen Rolfe

Hannah went from high flyer in the city to business owner and has never looked back. In the cosy Cotswold village of Butterbury, she runs Tied up with String, sending handmade gifts and care packages across the miles, as well as delivering them to people she thinks need them the most. 

But, when her ex-best friend, Georgia, shows up and wants in on the action, will Hannah be willing to forgive and forget? With her business in jeopardy, she needs to maintain the reputation she’s established and discover who she can trust. Meanwhile, a mysterious care package lands on her own doorstep at Lantern Cottage. Who is trying to win her heart – and will she ever be willing to give it away? 

Dial A For Aunties – Jesse Q. Sutanto

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mothers call for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family, and nothing, not even an unsavoury corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers. 

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love – and biggest heartbreak – makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in the span of one weekend? 

The Secret Life Of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

Another one of the most acclaimed spring reads, The Secret Life of Bees is set in South Carolina in 1964, and charts the life of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted Black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. 

They escape to Tiburon, a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerising world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.