June Baby by Garvey, Shannon

Some summers never leave you.

In this moving debut novel, set over the course of one transformative summer in the lush, beachy enclave of Block Island, a young woman reckons with love, loss, and the choices she must make to move forward.

"The book of the summer! It has everything I want in a beach read: juicy romance, explosive family secrets, and a delicious island setting."--Elin Hilderbrand

At seventeen, Ruth lost her mother to cancer, and her father, unable to handle his grieving daughter, shipped her off to Block Island with nothing but a name scribbled on the back of a receipt: Diana Beckett. Diana, a renowned photographer, took Ruth in for the summer, and Block Island became Ruth's refuge, a place of beauty and creativity, a place where she could nurture her dreams of being a writer, a place where she could fall in love for the first time--with Diana's nephew, Charlie.

Now, at twenty-seven, Ruth has spent the last ten summers living and working among the lucky few who get to vacation in this wealthy beach town, and the rest of the year just scraping by, yearning to return to the place where she feels safe and unburdened. But then Ruth's world is upended by tragedy again. Desperate for an anchor, she reaches for the person she's been pining for since she met him--Charlie--who has his own startling revelation to share. And when another surprise comes in the form of a box left to Ruth by Diana, its contents raise questions about just how well she knew the two women who raised her. Torn between what to believe about her past, and what her future might hold, Ruth is faced with another choice: does she dare to rewrite her story entirely?

Both a heartfelt coming-of-age story and a tender exploration of love and grief, set against a backdrop of golden dunes and seaside sunsets, June Baby shows us what it might look like to embrace a life shaped not by loss, but by possibility.

Author: Shannon Garvey
Publisher: Random House
Published: 05/12/2026
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.38h x 6.31w x 1.35d
ISBN: 9780593979907

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 04/01/2026

About the Author
Shannon Garvey received her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught undergraduate classes. She has published short fiction in The Saturday Evening Post. She grew up in Rhode Island, and now lives on the rocky New Hampshire coast. She researched June Baby during many years waiting tables in tourist towns and her time working on Block Island.