As summer slowly winds down, the beach days, vacations, long afternoons, and lazy hours with a book will soon become memories. But before the season slips away completely, we’re taking stock of the books that gave us something to talk about.

From Fatima Bala’s The Lies We Tell, which arrived in late July and quickly filled bookshelves and launch rooms, to Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters, which made its way through a series of events, and Tomilola Coco Adeyemo’s Efun’s Jazz, released just this August but already on the lips of so many readers, these are the books that defined the summer.