The Best Lakeside Romance Books for a Summer Escape

If you haven’t read Carley Fortune yet, this is a great place to start, though fair warning: you will immediately want to read everything else she’s written.

Alice returns to Barry’s Bay, a small lake town in Ontario, for the summer with her grandmother. She’s a photographer who has spent years watching other people’s lives through a lens, which suits her just fine. Then Charlie Florek shows up and fine stops being the right word (or maybe the right word as he is mighty fine as this dude is confident, flirtatious and has dimples).

I loved the way Carley Fortune writes this lake setting, especially the cottage vibes, as it made me feel like I’ve actually been there. The romance builds at a gorgeous pace, and the warmth between Alice and her grandmother also gives the book real heart beyond that hot central relationship. It hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list when it came out in May 2025, which surprised nobody who had already read her previous books.

This is the one that started it all for a lot of readers when it came out several years ago, and it holds up better than you might expect from a series opener that’s nearly a decade old.

Olivia Bellamy is a Manhattan career woman who returns to her family’s summer camp in the Catskill Mountains to oversee a renovation she didn’t volunteer for. Camp Kioga is where she spent her summers growing up, which means every corner of it holds something she thought she’d left behind… including Connor Davis, the brooding gorgeous contractor she has a complicated history with (who doesn’t love a second chance romance?!).

What I enjoyed about this book is that the renovation plot actually earns its place in the story. Olivia isn’t just fixing buildings, she’s figuring out what she wants her life to look like, and Camp Kioga forces her to sit with that question in a way her Manhattan life never did. I went straight to book two the moment I finished, which tells you everything you need to know about how the first one landed.

Pearl Lake this time, and a much spikier dynamic!

Dillion Stitch comes back to her hometown to help her family, not to fall for the man who has just moved into the cottage next door. Donovan ‘Van’ Firestone arrives at Pearl Lake to deal with his late grandmother’s cottage and is charming and a total button-pusher. What the banter covers up, though, is a man whose life has just quietly fallen apart, which Pearl Lake was supposed to be an escape from.

I love the way these two keep finding new ways to irritate each other before they work out what’s actually going on. This book is a great example of how an enemies to lovers dynamic works so well in a lakeside small-town setting because there are only so many places to be, which removes the option of them avoiding each other when they very much want to.

This one sits at the sweeter end of the spectrum and totally earns its place here.

Penny Terry returns to Sapphire Bay, a small town on the shore of Flathead Lake in Montana, after a family loss, and ends up inheriting a house. Her neighbor Wyatt is a famous artist who moved to this quiet small-town to escape the world, only to find that four sisters and a golden Labrador had other ideas. What follows is a friends to lovers story with a mystery subplot and the kind of community cast that made me want to relocate.

I love how Leeanna Morgan writes small-town settings with proper affection, and Flathead Lake is such a beautiful backdrop. If you prefer your romance on the lower-heat end, this is a strong pick and a series worth starting from the beginning.

Full disclosure: this one is mine!

Sophie Bennett arrives in Solace Springs, a small lakeside town in Washington State, with plans to turn a derelict boathouse into a community bookshop. She falls into the lake within ten minutes of arriving and gets rescued by Luke Rhodes, the gorgeous, grumpy local boat captain… and her new neighbor.

Luke isn’t impressed with Sophie’s renovation plans nor her color-coded spreadsheets, and thinks she has way too much optimism than the situation warrants. And yet he keeps turning up to help her with the renovation anyway. Somewhere between the paint arguments and the renovation disagreements, something shifts between them… and let’s just say that by the end, they find some very creative ways to test the structural integrity of a floating lake garden.

Solace Springs, the lakeside small-town it’s set in has cherry blossoms dropping petals onto the water in spring, and a cast of small-town characters who know everybody’s business and consider that a public service. I love the fact reviewers are also saying its cozy, fast-talking community charm is giving them Gilmore Girls and Virgin River vibes.