Summer Reads 2025: Best Books For Personal Growth By Women Authors

Forbes

26-05-2025

Check out these books that just might unlock a fresh perspective.
Memorial Day ushers in the unofficial start of summer and gives us a little extra time to kick back with a book. Books can be great teachers, sparking insights for personal growth, offering tools on how to live better, and revealing new ways to see the world. Here is a roundup of new books by women authors to read on your day off that just might unlock a fresh perspective.
"Unconditional," by Dr. Samra Zafar
Unconditional: Break Through Past Limits to Transform Your Future, By Dr. Samra Zafar
Sometimes you can be courageous on the outside, yet may be struggling inside with negative stories you tell yourself and limiting self beliefs. Such was the case Dr. Samar Zafar, a survivor of an abusive arranged child marriage who wrote the bestselling memoir, A Good Wife: Escaping the Life I Never Chose. In her latest book, Unconditional, she dives deep into how to unlearn the harmful beliefs that hold you back from being your most authentic self and living life on your own terms. The speaker, human rights advocate, physician, and educator weaves her brave personal story with research-backed tools for healing, paving the way for greater self acceptance and learning to love yourself unconditionally.
"Your Home Is A Vision Board," by Marie Diamond
Your Home Is A Vision Board: Harness The Secret Manifesting Power of Your Home, By Marie Diamond
Your environment no doubt impacts how you feel and, therefore, how you show up in the world. Marie Diamond, a globally recognized Feng Shui Master, international best-selling author, and manifestation teacher who is known from The Secret, believes that your home could be holding you back from achieving your dreams—or help push you closer towards them. In Your Home Is a Vision Board, Diamond shares secrets to align your space with your goals and transform your home into a three-dimensional vision board. This book explores everything from space clearing and goal-writing to elemental work. This is the mindful motivation you need to finally finish those spring cleaning projects and level up your home.
"What Matters Most," By Diane Button
What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living, By Diane Button
What makes life meaningful? End-of-life doula and author Diane Button shares some clues. She has sat by the deathbeds of countless people and listened to reflections about the most common life regrets as well as the things that bring true happiness in the end. Button has compiled the stories of individuals before they passed to help illustrate what matters most. A big takeaway of What Matters Most (out on September 16, 2025) is that reflecting on death can actually help you live life more intentionally, because it reminds you that your time here is finite.
"Fawning," By Dr. Ingrid Clayton
Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back, By Dr. Ingrid Clayton
When it comes to survival mechanisms and dealing with threats, you are probably familiar with the idea of fight, flight, or freeze. A fourth response known as fawning may be a trauma response that hasn't gotten as much attention. Licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Ingrid Clayton unpacks how fawning may be an adaptive strategy for staying safe in the moment, but becomes a real problem when it turns into an unconscious habit in our everyday lives. Often linked to codependency or people pleasing, fawning happens when we can't fight back or flee because we have to remain in the relationship or situation that is hurting us (such as a child can't leave their caregiver). Dr. Clayton shares how this tool of connection as a means of protection in the long-term causes a person to abandon their own needs and values—and how to break the pattern.
"Eve (Adapted for Young Adults): How the Female Body Shaped Human Evolution," By Cat Bohannon
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, By Cat Bohannon
In this fascinating exploration that recenters the female body in the narrative about evolution, author Cat Bohannon answers questions about the female body and evolutionary biology that scientists have long left unanswered, such as, Why do females menstruate? What's the purpose of menopause? Is 'mom brain' real? Why do women live longer on average than men? The young adult version was recently released and delves into teen-related topics such as how shifting hormones in adolescence impact the brain and why girls get higher academic scores than boys until around puberty. In her book Bohannon writes, 'From 1996 to 2006, more than 79% of animal studies published in the scientific journal Pain included only male subjects.' Cat Bohannon wrote a user's manual in part because women's bodies have long been understudied and she argues that unpacking sex differences will help us all better understand our own evolution.
"Resurface," by Cassidy Krug
Resurface: A Guide To Navigating Life's Biggest Transitions, by Cassidy Krug
There is an old adage that the only constant in life is change. Each of us experiences transitions, whether it's moving to a new city, switching careers, getting married or divorced, having a baby, experiencing the loss of a loved one, or something else that's less tangible. Former Olympic diver and author Cassidy Krug shares her personal story of dedicating her life to the single pursuit of diving, and having to figure out what to do next after she quit. Krug also interviewed people from different experiences to find a blueprint on how to navigate life's transitions, and shares expert advice and concrete exercises to help you find your way through big transitions, such as by creating a 'Wheel of Life,' where you assign categories (think: health, friends/family, career) to eight slices and rate your satisfaction for each. She writes, 'The liminal spaces of transitions are scary and often out of our control. But that's where we stage our personal revolutions.'