Every month, our favorite book publishers give us the opportunity to preview exciting book titles before they’re available to the general public, and every month, a few fully capture our hearts. Now that it’s officially summer, we’ll have more time to read than ever, so whether you prefer to read outside basking in the sun on a nice day or to retreat inside to an air conditioned room when it’s sweltering outside, July is the perfect month for bookworms.
This month offered some thrilling surprises, from an astronaut love story spanning time and space to a murder mystery riddled with HOA drama and a story about relationships, heartbreak and the choice to either embrace your history or learn to forget it completely. Keep scrolling to discover three July 2026 releases we adored and why you should read them once they arrive next month.
An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton – July 7
We’re not sure what we would do if our one true love was lost suddenly in a space mission, but that’s precisely what Vivian Mitchell must do when her astronaut husband, Joe, and the rest of his ship lose contact with Earth during a launch, with the whole planet watching.
It’s the worst-case scenario—something she has always dreaded. In fact, as we watch the story unfold, hopping between the mission in 1968 and their initial meeting years prior, we see that the grounded and practical journalist Vivian never thought she’d have a future with Joe. He’s handsome, and she’s irresistibly drawn to him, but how could she ever be with a dreamer like Joe with such an unsteady and dangerous career, who’d give up anything for the chance to go to the moon? Being tied to him would trap her in a kind of life she’s never wanted for herself. Could true life really be worth that kind of sacrifice?
As she mourns his disappearance, and the astronauts are assumed dead, she’s thrust into the spotlight as an astronaut’s widow, bearing more responsibility she does not want. Even stranger, she begins to receive messages—radio broadcasts, and little notes—that would be impossible for Joe to send, yet offer no other explanation. Could it be possible that her husband is reaching out to her through space and time? And what can Vivian possibly do to help guide him back to her?
We’ve never read anything quite like An Infinite Love Story, which blends an captivating romance with a touch of science fiction, all while touching on the unseen trials and expectations on the wives of astronauts in the ’60s. Vivian’s struggle feels grounded in real emotion and yearning for what could have been, while offering a perspective we never considered. And, just when we began to expect a resolution akin to that of Interstellar, the story offered a bittersweet yet satisfying twist in a different direction.
(An Infinite Love Story via Berkley)
The Masala Chai Mystery Club by MJ Soni – July 21
As big fans of murder mysteries in the least likely of settings, we were quickly enamored with The Masala Chai Mystery Club.
It follows Neeti Shah, a woman who’s not yet used to her life as a widow following the death of her husband, or her forced retirement from her beloved library. At the very least she has her group of friends in her quiet neighborhood, who love to sit around chatting and drinking her famous chai. But then one day, the completely unexpected happens when one of her neighbors dies. The victim, Rohit, didn’t have many fans, disliked for causing trouble in the HOA and being generally unpleasant. Neeti is the only one who mourns her childhood friend, as her loyalty to him goes deeper than anyone else could know.
His death is ruled an accident, with the police determining he had a heart attack and fell down the stairs, but Neeti isn’t so sure. His death is suspiciously similar to the one in The Dumb Witness, the latest pick for their local pick club, and she immediately assumes it was murder. After all, Rohit had many enemies. She quickly forms the Masala Chai Mystery Club, recruiting her group of friends, each with their own unique skills and insights, to solve the case. In the meantime, they begin to unravel a much larger conspiracy they never would have anticipated, and the situation starts to spin out of control. Different parties are all too ready to get in the way of their investigation, making the pool of suspects grow every larger. After yet another death, it becomes evident that Neeti needs to watch out—especially when someone starts threatening her niece and grand-nephew.
The Masala Chai Mystery Club is excellent at balancing its large ensemble of characters with real heart and humor to feed the audiences clues and build the case, without giving up its secrets too easily. Neeti is easy to empathize with, and when her loved ones are in danger, we deeply feel the urgency and stakes. We also adored the way food lies at the center of each meeting, bringing people together and creating community in the midst of a murder investigation, and the full story of Neeti and Rohit’s story may have been our favorite element of the book.
(The Masala Chai Mystery Club via Crooked Lane Books)
The Good Parts by Evann Normandin – July 28
How far would you go for the love of your life if they chose to erase you entirely from their memory? That’s the powerful question at the center of Evann Normandin’s The Good Parts, offering one of the most intriguing premises we’ve stumbled upon this year.
In a single moment, Landon realizes that his life as he knew it is finished. By the time he reads the letter in his hands, his wife, Rose, will have taken a breakthrough pill that will completely erase her memory. She’ll forget everything except for the details she’s decided to write in a letter to her new self—and he’s not one of them. Landon, of course, isn’t so ready to give her up after the many beautiful years they’ve spent together. So, against everyone’s advice, he drops everything and books a ticket to Scotland, where the new Rose has started anew, in search of her. He believes that if they were so in love once, it will happen again, even as past guilt—and having an unfair advantage in his knowledge of Rose—resurface again and again.
The story is told in alternating chapters, jumping between perspectives and timelines with Landon’s quest unraveling in the present and Rose’s building love story with Landon starting with their college days. As Landon locates Rose and works his way into her new life, we see their love story flourish, and their joys and struggles into adulthood and marriage, ever inching closer to the devastating events that managed to tear them apart in the first place—that made Rose so desperate to forget everything that she had no choice but to leave him behind. And as Landon and the new Rose grow closer, any knowledge of their past may be more dangerous to both of them than they can imagine.
The Good Parts is equally beautiful and tragic, with dramatic irony ever pulling the story forward toward inevitable conclusions that filled us with dread (but definitely didn’t make us stop reading). It’s a moving story of both love and loss, and power of allowing yourself to ache and remember while still looking toward the future. We found that it broke our hearts in all the right ways.
(The Good Parts via Grand Central Publishing)
Missed our favorite releases from June? Click HERE to discover the three June 2026 book releases you shouldn’t miss.
