Summer to me means I get to spend long afternoons combining my two favorite activities: reading outdoors while snacking on peak season treats like peaches, tomatoes, and berry-flavored ice pops. So I was thrilled when I realized how many of this year’s new novels featured lots and lots of food (truly, what’s better than eating food while also reading about it?). From the cozy mystery set in a Filipino restaurant to the generation-spanning story about a family of Dakota seed keepers, these seven perfect-for-summer books feature chefs and food-lovers in beach towns, B&Bs, and beyond.

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    Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

    Eve Brown is desperate for a job after her parents finally cut her off. She stumbles into a charming bed-and-breakfast looking for a hot meal and ends up, somehow, as its new chef—much to the chagrin of the owner, who prefers order to chaos and simply cannot deal with Eve running wild in his B&B, no matter how tasty her full English breakfasts are. Sweet at times and extra (extra!) steamy at others, Talia Hibbert’s latest romance will remind you that opposites attract, good hospitality should always prevail, and happy endings aren’t impossible to find.

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    Yolk by Mary HK Choi

    Sisters June and Jayne Baek are not close. But then they suddenly end up living together—and cooking for one another—while trying to redefine what it means to be in each other’s life. As in her other novels, Mary HK Choi expertly portrays intimacy, relationships, and, of course, food: Amidst singing the praises of Shin Ramyun Black and shoplifting fancy snacks at bodegas, Jayne tries to reset her relationship with June even as she struggles with disordered eating and her sister comes to terms with a difficult diagnosis.

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    Arsenic and Adobo

    This breeze-right-through-it cozy mystery follows baker Lila Macapagal as she investigates the murder of her ex-boyfriend, the town’s too-mean food critic, after he dies over a meal in her aunt’s flailing Filipino restaurant. Dishes like almondigas, lumpia, ube crinkle cookies, and calamansi-ginger pie will tempt readers as they float through the novel to find out whether or not Lila and her friends and family can solve the crime and save the restaurant.

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    Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly

    Chef Dante doesn’t put up with any picky eaters: He’s famous for a reason—his cooking—and he’s not interested in people coming to his restaurant if they’re not going to eat what he wants to cook. But then he meets Lizzie, who finds herself off the Italian coast to get some space (she hopes) away from her hardships. Picky is a good word for Lizzie, who prefers hamburgers and fries to Dante’s roasted turbot with persimmon coulis and lamb-tongue ravioli, and the two certainly don’t expect to fall for each other. But, of course, they do.

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    A Phở Love Story by Loan Le

    What happens when two teens whose parents own rival Vietnamese restaurants are forbidden from interacting with each other? In Loan Le’s debut novel, they have a chance encounter and the rest, of course, is history. In this sweet Romeo-and-Juliet-style young adult romance, Linh Mai and Bảo Nguyễn try to stay loyal to their families, their communities, and their parents’ versions of phở and banh xeo, while also finding their own passions outside of the restaurants.

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    Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet by Laekan Zea Kemp

    Pen Prado doesn’t always understand her father, but she does know his restaurant—known just as much for her coconut cake as his taco menu—is where she belongs. And then she gets fired. Faced with her mistakes and working to find a new balance between independence and community, Pen is struggling when she meets Xander Amaro. The two find solace and hope in food and young love as they navigate their lives—the loan shark threatening local businesses, Pen’s mental health, Xander’s immigration status—and learn to trust each other, bolstered by Pen’s baking and the antics of the restaurant community around them.

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    The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

    As Rosalie Iron Wing, now a widow, leaves her husband’s farm to return back home, this beautiful novel traces her story and her family’s history through the perspective of four women across generations, who have loved, lost, and fought to retain their Dakota culture and have, above all, always made sure to protect the seeds that sustain them. From Diane Wilson, the executive director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, this immersive book is as much a love letter to the earth and what it gives us as it is to Rosalie’s family.