Drumroll please! It’s almost time for our annual MMD Summer Reading Guide: a beloved tradition and the best part of the whole reading year! Your 2025 (aka our fourteenth, can you believe it?) edition includes 30+ great new summer titles (publishing April to August) I’ve read every word of and can vouch for, related backlist selections, fun and useful bonus features, and a new-for-2025 road trip theme.
Buckle up, it’s almost time for summer reading! Here’s what you need to know.
2025 Summer Reading Guide and Unboxing Party
We’re releasing this year’s Guide on Thursday, May 15.
Once again, our 2025 SRG is an included perk for our community members in the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club and What Should I Read Next Patreon communities, along with Unboxing access.
And once again, we’re offering an a la carte option for our 2025 SRG + Unboxing access, for those who don’t have the time or inclination to join a community.
We will deliver the guide to all members and our a la carte readers at 10:00 a.m. EDT on May 15, and will host two Unboxing Parties that day at 1:00pm and 8:00pm Eastern time. This event isn’t essential but is included and a whole lot of fun, and all kinds of useful. In these 90+ minute live session, I share every title in the guide and why I chose it. These conversations are live and unscripted: choose the one that best fits your schedule (or come twice, we won’t stop you!). While my book talk is substantially similar in each session, the live Q&A will differ.
If you can’t join us live, no worries—we’ve got you covered; we make a replay available to everyone who gets the Guide.
There are three four ways to get the 2025 MMD Summer Reading Guide:
- Join the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club.
- Support the What Should I Read Next Patreon.
- Purchase the guide and Unboxing access a la carte.
- I hate to muddy the waters by talking about a fourth option, but the fact of the matter is, we have a new-for-2025 print-only option that some of you are going to pounce on so I can’t leave it out! Read on.
New for 2025: get a print 2025 Summer Reading Guide magazine!
For the first time, we’re professionally printing the guide for you!
Your Summer Reading Guide purchase includes a digital PDF of the full Guide and access to the live Unboxing events. But if you want to hold onto your Guide, flip through it all summer, leave it on your coffee table, look back on it in a year or two when you’re wondering what to add to your library holds, then add a printed SRG magazine to your order.
If you would like, we are also offering the option to purchase the print guide ONLY. This magazine-only option does not include our digital PDF Guide or Unboxing access.
Timing note: these will ship via USPS first-class mail AFTER May 15. This year we’ve printed Fall Book Preview and our MMD Book Club Yearbook, and have learned these typically arrive within two days to two weeks of mailing. (We wish it weren’t so, but because of the current uncertain shipping landscape, this option is available for U.S. mailing addresses only.)
We’ve rounded up more info and answered your most frequently asked FAQ right here. We hope you’ll choose the option that’s right for you. More FAQ about Guide delivery and order specifics are right here.
What’s the difference between Book Club and Patreon?
Great question! If you’d like to listen to MMD community manager Ginger Horton and I talk about the difference, we made this Patreon bonus episode publicly available to all: By popular request: Anne and Ginger talk Patreon vs Book Club. It’s a fun and informative conversation.
Our communities have different scopes and emphases: we think of our Patreon offerings as being bite-sized, while MMD Book Club is more like a buffet. We encourage you to choose the one that best works for you and your reading life.
Our WSIRN Patreon community is an extension of the What Should I Read Next podcast, and offers Friday bonus episodes (e.g., One Great Book, Mini Matchmaking, Industry Insights), peeks behind the scenes, and additional curated book recommendations to our readers in that space. Patreon is audio-first, which means you can mostly participate when it’s convenient for you. We host two events each semester in Patreon: one seasonal preview (like Summer Reading Guide Unboxing) and one additional event like Ask Us Anything, Live Mini Matchmaking, or Trivia Night. Our patrons also influence the show by offering input on future episode themes and guests and voting on our episode titles.
Our slate of MMD Book Club offerings is more robust, which is why we call it a buffet: we seek to offer lots of great literary content in this space, and don’t expect you to put everything on your plate! We host many live events in this space, including monthly book and author discussions, regular classes on literature and the reading life, and community events like our Readers’ Days and Weekends, Best Book of Summer, Reading Life Rehab, Readalongs, Join Us for Journaling, and more. Our live events are video-driven, but you don’t need to attend live to participate: much like Unboxing, we record our events so you can watch on your schedule. Our custom-built member site also sets Book Club apart: our 24/7 forums (and the app) makes it easy to enjoy all the book talk your heart desires, and connect with other readers who love books as much as you do.
A la carte access
Once again we’re offering a la carte access for those who don’t have the time or inclination to join a community. Your ticket includes our full PDF guide, your invite to our live Unboxing sessions, and your Unboxing replay. Get your a la carte ticket here.
If you’re not able or do not wish to join one of our member communities or purchase the guide separately, please know that we’ll keep with our longstanding tradition of sharing our Minimalist Summer Reading Guide on the blog, and I’ll share many summer reading titles here and on What Should I Read Next all summer long.
Thanks so much for your support over the years. I can’t wait to share our 2025 guide and to hear how it shapes your reading life this summer. I’m so looking forward to the reading season to come, and I hope you are, too.
Thanks for reading, and most of all, for allowing me to be a part of your summer reading.
Anne