What a fun read this was! Larissa goes away for the summer and meets a girl, and they end up having more fun than Larissa expected. She had never kissed a girl before. Larissa is surprised at her strong feelings for Jasmine but it’s time for back to school. Then her crush of six years,Chase, has now noticed her and they begin dating. Larissa is torn because surprise Jasmine is now going to her school! Larissa is torn. Who does she really care for and want the most?

There's a lot to love about this book, and with so much in the plus column, there of course has to be room for the multiple little hiccups that take away (slightly!) from full enjoyment of and immersion in this book. We're hooked at the start with the gripping attraction and 'stupid hot' crush. Author does a great job of speaking in authentic teen tone and has done great work in giving us excellent voice. I wasn't distracted by voice and found that author's attention to great dialogue and inner voice really created a cloud of realism here. Excellent work. I didn't latch onto the rational for Chase's attraction to Lara. It just seemed like they needed more interaction, or some reason why a crush would burst out full-force. A bi romance is done well and breathes in this book even though author (or perhaps editors?) seems to push the nationality topic hard to make points. Calling a character a 'non-binary friend' didn't fit smoothly, and it felt like this book was checking items off a list at times. But it's still a great read, and even those little distractions are easily forgiven. This is a good one.

3/5⭐️ 𝘢𝘳𝘤 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺
Video coming soon to my TikTok @zitaknowshowtoread
(I'm trying out a new way of structuring my reviews)

STORY?: Cool for the Summer follows Lara, who returns to school after a near-perfect summer spent in a whirlwind romance with a girl she met on vacation. But nothing is ever easy is it? Of course not! upon returning to school Laras longtime crush Chase starts flirting with her. Lara must choose between her longtime crush who might finally be hers or the girl she can't stop thinking about.

CHARACTERS: Our protagonist Lara wasn't my favourite character of all time. She was snarky and fun at times but I truly wasn't a fan of her narration (which I will get into more under WRITING). As for her love interests, Chase Lara's longtime crush felt a little one-dimensional to me especially compared to the other corner of the love triangle Jasmine. Where Jasmine had interests that aligned with Lara's, the only thing I can say about Chase was that he was nice. Just nice (and attractive). They had some chemistry but it was a little boring and made Lara's indecision surrounding her two love interests a little less believable. Lara's group of school friends were okay if a little forgettable as were her friends from her summer vacation, who were given all of three pages in the book before I promptly forgot about them.

ROMANCE: As I said above, the romance between Lara and Chase was a little lacklustre. He was nice (I cannot think of any other ways to describe him, I'm sorry). The only things that Lara seemed to like about him were his looks (and his arms). Lara and Jasmine's romance was fun and cute and honestly a joy to read. The book was pretty sex-positive without being too smutty which was a win for me (if you have seen my TikToks you may understand my frustration with authors YA books too sexual for teenagers). And the bisexual MC discovering her sexuality felt pretty true to life for me (as a queer teenager myself).

WRITING: This book was told in the first person and through two different timelines "now" being Lara's time at school and "then" telling the story of what happened between her and Jasmine over the summer. I can't say that I'm a fan of time jumps in books but this one executed it pretty well changing it frequently enough that it didn't get too boring but not so much that I didn't get invested.

PERSONAL COMMENTS: holy SHIT was I happy to read a book with a bisexual mc!!!!! There is a sad amount of queer rom-com like books and this absolutely fit the bill. And the diversity was great in this book featuring a bunch of characters of colour and even (briefly) featuring a non-binary character!

PROBLEMS I HAD WITH THIS BOOK: none that I haven't covered above.

I flew through Cool for the Summer! I adored the characters and enjoyed going along the journey of them trying to understand their sexuality. The diversity and way the characters were written was absolutely beautiful

Lara has always had a crush on popular football player, Chase Harding, and it seems like this year, she finally has a chance with him. While it normally would have been a dream come true, Lara is still thinking about the girl she spent her summer with, Jasmine. Then, Jasmine shows up at her school.

Jasmine and Lara pretend like they don't know each other, but even as Lara and Chase start getting more serious, Lara can' get Jasmine out of her mind.

Overall, I really liked this. It felt very authentic and all the characters seemed so realistic. I love that this is a non-angsty wlw since so many wlw books are super depressing. This was a fun read and has the prettiest cover.

**Review to be posted on Goodreads and blog closer to publication date.

I have so many positive things to say about COOL FOR THE SUMMER! The characters are realistic and relatable. The plot was very well written. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I raced through it. I highly recommend this title. A nice cool, breezing story. Everyone will love it!

This book was an okay, albeit a little dull. The main character is sort of vapid and hard to root for. She's a good person, just boring. It nice to read a book about not straight people though. I would recommend this book to teens, but not to older audiences.

Very quick and cute read!
I don’t think I’ve ever read a romance where the main character is bisexual.
I loved the exploration of sexuality.
It seemed thoughtful and sweet.
I think love triangles are tricky to pull off, but I found this book did it pretty well. I think the ending was fairly obvious, but it’s a short book, so I wasn’t bothered.
I read a review before reading it and that it had some not great comments about ethnicity and a non binary character. I was glad to have the warning, and I will second that comment. It seemed rather flippant, but regardless, comments like that are never okay.
So while I think it is great we are getting bisexual representation in novels, I think that all representation matters and all of it should be paid attention to.
Overall, an enjoyable read, but be aware of some comments.

So good! The sapphic version of Grease I've been dying for ever since reading Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales! This book was YA, but also was about seniors (17-18 yr olds) making it a bit more mature for people who enjoy books more so on the older end of the YA spectrum. Again, so good! Definitely recommend 4/5 stars.

This is my favorite book that I have read this year.; I fell in love with it; its plot and its characters. Lara and Jasmine were one of the best couples ever; their chemistry and love for each other had me on the edge of my seat the entire read.
It was frustrating to see how long it took them to get where they needed to be. but Adler makes the situations that led them there, necessary. Lara needed to accept she has other layers to herself and Jasmine needed to express her feelings.
(I only have one more thing to say: I am in desperate need of a girlfriend *proceeds to listen 'we fell in love in october by girl in red*)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved this heartfelt book, featuring a bisexual love triangle and the coming of age story I would have devoured as a teen. I hadn't anticipated getting as emotional as I did throughout the story and I loved that journey. Unfortunately, there were a few parts of the book that sat with me the wrong way.

There were a few comments about race and ethnicity that didn't feel true to a teen experience and felt like they were just there for diversity - no fleshing out of those characters/experiences. There was another comment about a "nonbinary friend that felt off, even if it wasn't intended to come off that way.

I did love Lara's character arc and how she was able to explore her sexuality in high school. Her internal struggle was relatable and watching that exploration of validity/bisexuality on page was both affirming and heartwarming. I'm grateful that this book exists for anyone going through something similar.

3/5

This Grease inspired contemporary with a bisexual main character was certainly something. Summer love is fickle, and for high school senior Lara it arrives when she least expects it: while on summer holiday in Outer Banks, North Carolina. Swept away from her friends in New York and everything she knows, Lara spends the summer with Jasmine, the daughter of her mother's supervisor. What starts out as an unlikely friendship quickly blossoms into something incredible, but when they part ways at the end of the summer, neither expects to see the other again for some time. Of course, that's just where the story begins.

Cool for the Summer is exactly the kind of book I wish I'd had access to growing up. This story explores friendship, love, and sexuality in tandem with one another, and I can already tell it's going to break waves with young readers. The actual story follows two timelines, then and now, then being the summer, and now being the present day. Both timelines are dispersed equally in the progression of the story, which allow for the revelation of relationship development to be split equally between Lara and Jasmine, and Lara and Chase. As many of you know, I absolutely abhor love triangles with every fiber of my being, but for the sake of this book, it gets a pass. Mainly because the development of the plot indicated that the couple I wanted to get together was headed for endgame. There really was not a lot of explanation for Chase's sudden interest in Lara, which is just one reason I didn't really root for them as a couple. I think I needed more groundwork to be laid there in order for me to care, but I'm beginning to think the absence of it was intentional on the authors part. Showing the flaws in the relationship, while building up the background for the other couple. Brilliant. One thing about this that did surprise me was the balance between the lighthearted and more serious moments. I didn't really expect it, but the addition of serious topics into the story was critical and handled perfectly by the author.

I do want to make reference to a few things within the book that didn't sit well with me. One was the way certain characters were described when it came to their race and ethnicity, which seemed to serve as a diversity checklist more than anything else, and another was a statement about a nonbinary character, which seemed to have such a negative connotation associated with reading it. As most of these comments hinged around characters that were far in the background, I really question how and why they were said. Partly because we never saw or heard from these characters again, and because the negative comment was tacked on to a background character like it wanted to go unnoticed. These comments completely rubbed me the wrong way when I read them, and did impact my overall enjoyment of the book.

I do think the exploration of identity tied in with a journey towards learning more about oneself completely stole the show here. Add to the fact that this was inspired by Grease, and I just know it is going to come to mean something to a lot of people. Also, who else didn't know that cool for the summer was a wlw song. Just me?

Trigger warnings: biphobia, alcohol consumption (underage), parental divorce

Lara has spent the majority of her grade school years with a not-so-secret crush on the star football player, Chase Harding. However, a summer at the Outer Banks with her mom, her mom's boss, and his daughter makes her question everything she thought she knew about herself. Back at school after a dreamy summer, Lara hopes that Chase's newfound interest in her will blossom into something more only to be confronted by the very girl she is trying to forget. This story of new love and self-discovery won't disappoint.

My favorite thing about this book is that everything about it feels real. The main character struggles with real issues and handles them in a very real way. Dahlia Adler's supporting characters are just as full of life as her main characters and add such a level of depth to the narrative. I could feel the warmth of friendship and family love with every page I turned.

Cool for the Summer is the teen romcom I grew up adoring but with a modern (and very necessary!) twist! I love that young people can read this book and understand that there is no such thing as normal. Lara having feelings for two people at the same time is complicated by the fact that one is a boy and the other a girl. Very excited for people to read this book when it's out!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martins for the advanced read!

Major thank you to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book ahead of publication. I absolutely loved the discussion about self-discovery & identity, and how not everyone knows/realizes that they're queer when they're young, and I think this book will be really impactful and validating for other readers. There were a couple comments that rubbed me the wrong way (especially the "non-binary friend" comment, but I overall enjoyed Cool for the Summer!

Thanks NetGalley and Wednesday Books for my e-copy of Cool for the Summer!

This was very cute and I love to see a WLW plotline in YA!! But it didn’t live up to all of my expectations. I ended this book feeling warm & fuzzy inside about the romance… yet also kind of disappointed.

Through alternating timelines, we see Lara return from summer break and suddenly attract the interest of her long-time crush Chase, and flashbacks to her summer at the beach with Jasmine, her mom’s boss’s daughter. Were her and Jasmine just having fun together, or was it something more? It gets more complicated when Jasmine shows up at her school and pretends like they don’t know each other.

To start with the pros:
-Lara’s questioning of her sexuality throughout the story felt relatable & nuanced. The story highlights that not everybody knows their sexuality from a young age. I liked that it wasn’t all tidily figured out by the end of the book, and she didn’t ever label herself.
-Lara’s character really grew throughout the book. She is still a high school girl who is interested in being liked, but I loved how she worked to discover herself, and explore who she is without her tight-knit friend group. These are conversations I would have really related to in high school.
-Open discussions about sex and masturbation. Intimate scenes w two girls in YA!
-Lara works at a bookstore coffee shop and books play a relatively big role in the story.
-Jewish rep! Jasmine is Syrian-Jewish, and Lara is Russian and “technically Jewish” though “not remotely affiliated."

While the central conversations about sexuality were really well-done, lots of (mostly little) issues seemed to continue to pop up throughout the book for me:
-All of the characters except Lara, and maybe Jasmine, felt underdeveloped. We were seeing such little pieces of all the characters, and being told rather than shown when it came to Lara’s friends and their personality traits. I think this was partly due to the alternating timelines between the school year and the previous summer. Chase seemed to intentionally be kept at a distance from us, possibly to show that Lara had idolized him for so long that he had just become a vague stereotype of a perfect guy in her mind.
-Reading about ~popular kids~ is never super appealing to me. There were so many descriptions of Lara’s hair and tan and how beautiful she and her friends were. There was also some casual fatphobia about feeling like a beached whale, “genetically blessed waists,” etc..
-It felt like white characters were viewed as the norm and characters’ ethnicities were only discussed if they varied from that.
-There were a sex scene where Lara forces herself to keep going because she believes she should just “do the thing” and then emotions will follow. It made me sad that this was never really addressed after that.
-In an attempt at diversity that ended up reading more like a punchline, a minor non-binary character was kinda thrown in there and branded as a ~mysterious person~ dating Lara’s lab partner. Uh oh, Lara doesn’t know what to call them if she can’t say boyfriend or girlfriend! 🙄 Eventually calling them “dating-my-lab-partner-Jamie Taylor,” it just rubbed me the wrong way.

TW: biphobia, sexual content, underage drinking, casual fatphobia

This was a nice, quick read. Larissa is a high school girl who finally gets to date the guy of her dreams, just when the girl who she can't stop thinking about appears at her school. Although I'm not really a fan of the crowd and scene surrounding Larissa, I thought she had good character development throughout the story. Even though her feelings for Jasmine were obvious from the very beginning, her slowly accepting those feelings and figuring them out without making rash decisions, even when she was dating Chase, was well written. I also liked how the chapters alternated between "now" and "then"(her summer break) because it gave a glimpse of her relationship with Jasmine.

Despite the core message of figuring out feelings and accepting them, the book was overall okay. None of the other characters stood out. In fact, it was even stated by Larissa that Chase started to like her out of nowhere, even though she's liked him for years, and even he was aware of her crush. As someone who was her boyfriend for a good portion of the book, he was a very underdeveloped character. We really don't know much about him other than his stereotypical jock characteristics and being a loving older brother (which is was only told, not shown). I even found most of Larissa's friends kind of annoying.

Overall, it was a good short story with a good message, but it contained flat characters and a plot that got boring at times.

Overall rating: 3.5/5

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for a honest review I enjoyed this one the plot the characters they were all well written and I couldn’t put it down!

This book was so much fun! It really is a perfect summertime book. The beach vibes? Immaculate. Bonfires by the water? Incredible.

Something I really appreciated about this is how messy it is. Larissa’s feelings are complicated and confused, because she’s supposed to like guy, right? I mean, she’s only been crushing on him since forever. But why can’t she stop thinking about the girl, then? I enjoyed watching Larissa figure out her heart. It’s a type of story I’m not sure I’ll ever get tired of.

As well, the friendships were all really realistic I thought too! Sometimes your friends aren’t perfect, and you can feel hurt by them. But at the end of the day, they’re still your friends. I feel like that was handled really well here.

I will say, I wish it was just a tad bit longer so that some side characters, especially Chase, could have been developed slightly more. But honestly? This was a really solid, fun and cute YA contemporary that I’d highly recommend if you’re looking for a queer summer read!

This was such a sweet romance that dealt with questioning one's sexuality so beautifully. For as long as she can remember Larrissa has been in love from afar with a boy that goes to her school. Then, she meets Jasmine and the two have a summer romance that leaves her confused and newly confident for returning to school and getting the attention of the boy she's liked forever. This book showcased the complexities of female friendships and was diverse in its romantic pairings/options. I also loved the inclusion of graphic novel love from the characters. I would recommend this book to any fans of romance and especially queer love stories.