Summer lovin’, had me a blast. Or that’s the idea, anyway.

In song, the lazy months of beach trips and top-down country jaunts are supposed to be a golden time of the year for romance. But in celebrity circles, the summer of 2015 may be remembered as a buzz saw for famous lovers: a grim season that sliced several of Hollywood’s most celebrated couples in half.

It kicked in to gear with the endlessly dissected Ben Affleck-Jennifer Garner separation in June; continued with the unplugging of the first couple of ’90s alt rock, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale; and culminated in the news over Labor Day that Jon Hamm was splitting from his girlfriend of 18 years, Jennifer Westfeldt. At least 24 star couples, many of them tabloid staples, have gone down for the count since Memorial Day, according to a recent US Weekly timeline on the topic.

While all these flameouts were presumably a coincidence, Howard Bragman, a veteran Hollywood publicist, said the relative quiet of summer can serve as a useful shield of sorts for stars looking to duck the worst of the press coverage.

Publicists, for instance, have long labored to keep bad news under wraps until Friday afternoons or holidays, in an attempt to duck the news cycle, Mr. Bragman said. By the same logic, celebrities and their handlers may reap some strategic benefit by holding off announcements of a split until many gossip consumers are away on vacation or lounging on the beach.

Historically, Mr. Bragman said: “summer is not prime media season. TV ratings trend lower and magazine and newspapers have generally lower circulation.”

While such talk of the news cycle means far less in the era of social media, when bad news has a way of finding any electronic device at any hour of the day, the sheer volume of celebrity breakups this summer “may have encouraged some whose relationships were fraying to jump in, hoping they would be lost in the shuffle,” Mr. Bragman said.

But the news cycle is only one reason summer may prove the best time, relatively speaking, for Hollywood power couples to achieve celebrity mitosis. Stars have to consider work-life balance, too, said Rachel A. Sussman, a New York psychotherapist and author of the 2011 book “The Breakup Bible.”

Any breakup is a major stress trigger in life, she said, and it is best not to attempt it at a time when professional obligations are cresting. Unless the stars in question are promoting a summer blockbuster, summer is often a relatively quiet season, removed from film festivals, awards season, holiday releases and the like.

“If you’re shooting a film or promoting one, you don’t want to do anything that is going to distract you,” Ms. Sussman said. “Celebrities will put off a breakup or a divorce until a time in their career when they can go on the down low.”

Regardless, if celebrities were choosing summer as a strategically sound time to split, it would run counter to the behavior of most mortals, who tend to confine their romantic misfortune to the colder months, according to some recent inquiries into the topic.

Writing in Time magazine in 2013, Marina Adshade, an economist in Canada, cited the period of the two weeks leading up to Christmas as the most popular time for breakups because couples are bombarded with evidence on how much the other is invested in the relationship. That is, partners take note of the care put into their gift, say, or the willingness of a beloved to sit through another rubber-turkey dinner at Aunt Mary’s house.

And a post on Snopes.com, the popular urban-legend-vetting site, cited January as a famous relationship minefield, because couples who have put off the big decisions until the new year are finally ready to act. “January, therefore, racks up not only all the unpairings that normally would have accrued to it, but also many of those of mid-November through December,” the post reads.

For most people, summer traditionally was the most unlikely time of year for struggling couples to pull the plug, said Bernard Clair, a prominent New York divorce lawyer. In those relatively carefree months, he said, “people are no longer cooped up under the same roof, the kids are away at camp, so the arguments between spouses rarely reach Level 7, the red zone.”

In the view of Rob Shuter, a former celebrity publicist who now runs the gossip site Naughty Gossip, that may be just as true for celebrities as for “normal” people, despite perceptions. Hollywood breakups, after all, are shark-attack stories of celebrity journalism, he said, a summer staple and nothing more.

“Every summer, all the celebrity breakups seem to catch us all off guard, leaving folks to wonder if love is still alive,” Mr. Shuter said.

But, he added: “listing all the splits together in one neat little package is a celebrity journalist trick that has been going on for years. It allows pages to be filled with content, while still allowing the staff to enjoy Labor Day off.”

Indeed.