2.5. Rounded up for truly exquisite narration.

I thought that this book was...fine. There were some things that I thought were really important about it, there were some things that I found really frustrating, and there were some things that just didn't work for me. I'm feeling really mixed about it.

The book tells the story of Lara, a high school girl who has just come back from summer vacation in the Outer Banks, and the boy that she has had a massive crush on for as long as she can remember is suddenly into her. The only problem is that the girl she had a confusing, definitely-more-than-friends fling with shows up out of the blue on the first day of school and Lara has to reconcile what she wants now with what she has always thought she's wanted.

The story is told in an intriguing time slip structure, which is actually really compelling. However, the way that Lara acts towards pretty much everyone throughout the book is pretty mean, and it's hard to get on her side without understanding what actually happened last summer (i.e. "the big reveal"). Even after all is revealed, it was still really hard for me to root for her after watching her make really mean choices that didn't seem like they had a good reason. I am all for young women, especially young queer women, being allowed to be selfish when it comes to their emotional and mental health. However, Lara hurts a lot of people, including everyone she's supposed to love (and most especially her love interest), and it's really hard to root for her without understanding why or even if there is a good reason. And I don't think there actually ends up being one.

On the whole, the depiction of teenagers in the story felt a little off to me. It seemed like these teenagers were having way more sex than modern American teenagers have in real life, and I wish that the female friendships had been stronger and more dynamic. Teenage girls deserve representations of teenage female friendships that are complex and challenging while still being loving, and the ones in this book just fell short for me.

The story explores class difference in a way that I have rarely seen in YA romance before, and I think is incredibly important. Both the heroine and the female love interest of this novel are also Jewish, and they experience that in different ways, which I found to be really wonderful and essential representation. I am also so excited by the influx of bisexual stories being told right now, so that is always a plus.

Natalie Naudus's narration is, as ever, precise, fluid, and so beautifully timed,

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

It's no secret that Lara Bogdan has had a crush on the hot football star of her high school. When Chase Harding finally takes an interest in her, Lara is pretty sure her dreams have come true - that is, until Jasmine Killary, Lara's summer fling, comes unexpectedly strolling back into her life on the first day of school and disrupting just about everything in Lara's life. In Cool for the Summer, Dahlia Adler has written a charming book that still manages to challenge some very real issues in the LGBTQ+ community, such as biphobia and coming to terms with one's sexuality. Cool for the Summer is absolutely not to miss!

I liked the book but I also didn't like it, if that makes sense. I enjoyed some parts, expected more in others and I found unnecessary the over focus given to unimportant details instead of focusing more on Lara and why she wasn't communicating.
I know too well how hard it is to talk about things, even more if said things are having feelings for a girl when you never ever had those. But the realness of this questioning, which I liked and I related to, didn't erase how I felt about the plot, or the lack of. It all seemed too much like "bi girl horny for two people doesn't talk about stuff ends up breaking hearts including hers" trope. It's a personal opinion because I don't like these kinds of characters so I found myself annoyed often.
While there were good elements and the ending was cute, sadly I wasn't really invested in the story like I wanted to be.

Rep: bisexual MC, jewish MC, russian MC, jewish loveinterest, bisexual loveinterest, sapphic romance, gay SC, aro ace SC, japanese-american SC, Black SC, latinx SC, west asian SC

If I had to describe this book in three words it would be Grease meets Clueless.
The story is told in alternation „now and then“ chapters going back and forth between the summer Larissa spend with Jasmin at her families house and now, back in school.
Larissa has been obsessed with a football player at her school for years now and he seems to finally be interested in her too, but when the girl she spend her summer (making out) with suddenly transfers there as well things start getting messy.

I am not generally opposed to love triangles, but what I really hate is this „I love you and want to be with you, but at the same time bang someone else“. Because this didn’t feel like a real love triangle in the first place.
Larissa and Jasmin spend their whole summer together and they clearly had a connection. They both thought their relationship would be over after the summer, because Larissa was supposed to move back to her mums.
Larissa’s interest in Chase was very superficial, based on his looks and his status at school as a football player. Yes, he seems to be a nice guy and he is hot, but Larissa herself is realising during her first dates with him, that she’s not really that into him. But she’s still making out with him like all the time! For me it felt more like she was using him than figuring herself out and in my opinion the way she treated him is not cool.
Justifying it all with “Jasmin wants to act as if we don’t know each other” when she never even said so and Larissa HERSELF is making everything super awkward and complicated from the start really made me angry.
And that was my main problem with this book. I really, really didn’t like the MC or most of her friends at school (especially her bf Shannon “I’m so rich and I went to Paris, look how sophisticated and worldly I am”).
They were all super self-centred and shallow, more concerned with gossip and their outward appearance than other people.
I don’t know how many times their perfectly manicured nails or perfect bodies were mentioned, but I swear I never knew so much about every single characters nail polish in my life reading a book.
The love drama could have been easily solved with one conversation if Larissa wasn’t so hellbent on going to prom with the famous Chase. Why she constantly had to make out with him while thinking about Jasmin the whole time and also be so mean to her and being angry at her when she literally didn’t do anything to her is beyond my comprehension. And sentences like “I’m a naturally horny person” only add to the horrible prejudices bisexual people have to deal with. Bisexuals aren’t promiscuous people who just can’t decide. This might be only me personal, but it somehow really pissed me off.

I liked how diverse the cast of this book was and I also really liked the “then” chapters, with Larissa and Jasmin getting to know each other. I liked the sapphic romance in this, the summer scenes with Lara and Jasmin were super cute and I loved the ending.
I also liked how Larissa is figuring out herself, finding out what she truly wants for herself and who she wants to be.
Most of the characters even became more likeable in the very end.
But all in all this was sadly just a meh book for me with little to no plot beside the (unnecessary) love drama and some very unlikeable characters for most parts of the book.

The narrator was amazing though, she has a really nice voice, good and easy to understand pronunciation and I liked her reading pace!

After spending the summer in Outer Banks, NC, Lara is back in NY to finish out her senior year. Chase Harding, the guy that Lara has had a crush on for most of her life is finally her boyfriend and everything is going according to plan. Well that is until Jasmine also shows up at Lara’s high school. The same Jasmine that Lara hooked up with all summer.

This story is told from Lara’s POV, and the reader volleys between the past and the present. We get to see the romance between Lara and Jasmine that transpired over the summer clash with the awkward predicament that Lara is currently in where she is questioning her sexuality and being with Chase.

Don’t get me wrong, this book isn’t without high school drama. There’s definitely plenty of that, but it’s not the kind that is unrealistic or detracts from the plot.

Adler’s examination of questioning one’s sexuality was fantastic to see on page. You get to see Lara grappling with if she’s bisexual and if that label is appropriate for her. Unfortunately, there is definitely a lot of internalized biphobia as well as biphobia from peers, but it is called out and addressed.

Furthermore, when it comes to the side characters, we get to see a range of gender and sexual identity. We’ve got characters that are gay, non-binary, aroace, and none of it is gratuitous or a big deal.

I do want to comment that there is also Jewish representation in this book. As per the author: both Lara and Jasmine are Jewish, but not of the same denomination. Lara is Ashkenazi (Russian) and Jasmine is Sephardi (Syrian). I am not Jewish and cannot speak to the representation, but I think that it’s fantastic that we are getting Jewish MCs on page as well.

Overall, this is a great coming of age story that reminds people that it’s okay to question our identities even when they go against what we thought we knew or wanted.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing an advanced listening copy through NetGalley. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Wednesday Books for an ALC of Cool for the summer in exchange for an honest review!

Cool for the Summer jumps back between past and present in this coming out story for Lara, a young aspiring romance author. Caught between understanding herself and her feelings for Jasmine, and her long-standing crush on Football hottie, Chase, Lara navigates the confusion of high school and sexuality.

This book felt strikingly similar to my own experiences (albeit much earlier than my own). I love seeing Lara grow and understand that your wants and desires can change. Great all around rep. Both Jasmine and Lara are Jewish (different denominations), and there are multiple other LGBTQIA+ side characters that help Lara as she's working through her sexuality.

The audiobook is easy listening, and a quick read! Definitely recommend!

With major "But I'm a Cheerleader!" vibes, this book shows the popular girl questioning her sexuality. Lara's been crushing on her high school's quarterback since they were kids, but when he finally shows interest, she realizes that she might be more into a girl from her past...

This story is told in alternating timelines between present day (senior year) and the summer before. I think the dual timelines works super well in this book, and is a really great way to see the conflicting emotions of our main character, and her interest in Jasmine develop. As a straight woman, perhaps I shouldn't comment on the "accuracy" of the feelings of the MC and her experience coming out, but if there are complaints, I'd like to remind people that everyone's story is their own, and just because it doesn't match up with one reader's experience, it doesn't mean it's not a valid experience. I think the the overall plot of this book is where it shines.

However, I didn't love the character of Lara. She was overly annoying in the way that many teenagers are annoying--immature, vapid, too into herself. When she complained about spending the summer at a beach mansion for free in the first few pages, it left a bad taste in my mouth that was hard to get rid of. By halfway, I was starting to enjoy the book more, and found more depth to Lana's character, but she wasn't always the easiest to like with her top of the food chain social status. Despite being immature, Lara was super smooth with the lines, and I don't know anyone that smooth at 17. So it was an odd mash-up of feeling very young but also very experienced. It felt like an adult writing a teenager.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's a nice, frothy summer YA read. I listened to portions of this book on audio, and thought the narrator was fine. Her voices for some secondary characters verged on annoying, but it overall did not detract from the story.

Thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for my eARC and Macmillan Audio for my ALC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4 stars - 7/10

This was a terrific read about a girl struggling with her identity and coming of age. I liked how it went back and forth from the summer to the school year. It deals with important topics but is also really funny. I really enjoyed the narrator of this audiobook as well.

This one started out slow for me, but it picked up around 40%. It was such a good book at understanding and explaining bisexuality. Also the perspective as a teenager was just so good. It really brought me back to feeling like I was in highschool.

Man, do I love a messy queer love triangle. This book was SO MUCH FUN. It is full of pining and sass and questioning and FEELINGS and I highly, highly recommend checking this one out if you like YA romance! Seriously, so cute. This needs to be made into a summer movie asap bc I NEED IT

(Also, I listened to this one via audiobook and thought the narration was fantastic! Highly recommend x2!!)

CW: biphobia

This was one of my most anticipated reads and it did not disappoint. I wont lie I had the idea of this book up on a pedestal in my brain, who wouldn't when they hear BISEXUAL GREASE?

That being said I did have some dislikes. The first half of this book was slow. I can't put my finger on exactly what was not gelling for me initially but it kept losing my attention. Lara's best friend was CRINGE, yes she owned up to all her faults in the end but I was not a fan. Last the whole push and pull could have been avoided with one conversation.

NOW FOR THE GOOD! I enjoyed the alternating time frame a lot. Lara and Jasmine made for a great couple and you could actually see why they liked each other. With Chase and Lara I never understood what they liked about each other. Speaking of Lara I loved the way her sexuality was handled. Sexuality is not a one size fits all and no one is obligated to a label. One of the things Lara said in the book is wouldn't she have known sooner? She hangs out with pretty girls and never liked them? This book validates coming into your sexuality later in life and I think that is important.

The narration was great Natalie Naudus did not disappoint. I will definitely be looking for more narration by her. She differed from characters so well and even pulled accents for some of the side characters.

All in all this book is a fun queer summer read! 3.75 stars rounding up for netgalley.

Honestly just crying at how cute this was and how much the struggle to find a label that fits is.

Lara is back from a summer at the Outer Banks and she's determined to make this year hers. All things are going right when her long time crush, Chase, finally notices her. But then Lara finds out Jasmine, the girl she had a summer fling with, is also at school. Lara doesn't know what to feel and where her feelings truly lie.

A note on the Jewish rep first because I feel like Jewish characters don't get enough attention in gentile reviewers. This is from the author's review, both Lara and Jasmine are Jewish: Lara is Ashkenazi (Russian) and Jasmine is Sephardi (Syrian).

This book gave me all the feels. Between the is it only her, could I be queer etc that comes with questioning, I felt seen. Told in two timelines: flashbacks to the summer and now with Lara & Jasmine at school together. I loved seeing how events unfolded. Also Jasmine has my whole heart, I love her so much.

Also there were so many freaking cute ass scenes while Lara is at work at the bookshop/being a barista and like MY HEART. I am just a giant swoon. This book just worked so much for me, I truly loved it.

This was a delight! I've loved Dahlia's books for years, so I was thrilled to find out she finally had another book coming out, and YA at that! It can be hard to find books with multi-gender attracted main characters that are done well, and this title will be getting added to my list. I really enjoyed reading about our MC's struggle to understand and explore her sexuality as she fell in love and fell out of a crush. The jump back and forth between present day and the past summer was compelling, and I enjoyed the way it weaved together as the book drew to a close. Such a sweet romance, and seeing it develop over the course of their summer together, and then how the two girls had to learn to cope with each other and redefine their relationship in the context of high school social circles was painful, awkward, yet completely realistic.

Lara has been mooning over Chase Harding her whole life, and finally he's starting to notice her. Not only that, but he's asking her out, stopping by where she works, waving at her while he plays football, just absolutely everything that Lara has dreamed of. But on the first day of school a new girl shows up and not only is she charming, mysterious, and beautiful, she just so happens to be the same girl that Lara spent her whole summer with, Jasmine. And they were friends... just friends... maybe more than just friends. But Lara is having a hard time adjusting to a life where she has Chase and Jasmine in her world and Jasmine's presence makes it all the more harder for her to enjoy the attention she's finally getting from Chase. Lara is fighting her feelings for Jasmine, still unsure how she truly feels about her. Jasmine is making it very clear that she doesn't want anything to do with Lara, but Lara can't stop thinking about her, obsessing over everything she is doing, who she's hanging out with, what she's thinking, and how she feels about Lara. Because Lara can't stop thinking about how she feels about Jasmine.

In a heartwarming tale of finding out who you are and who you love and the struggle of being able to know who you are, Cool for the Summer takes on a heavy topic with an airy feel and makes you wish and hope for the best for its characters. Lara is sweet and personable and going through something that many young kids go through, figuring out their sexual identity. Jasmine is hard and soft and like all teenagers who think they know what they want, but aren't quite sure what it is and how to get it. With a great group a friends, a supportive mother, and a lot of heart, Lara learns to take on her thoughts and feelings.

I really liked this book and everything that Lara is going through. It was such a realistic depiction of uncertainty and desperation. The constant questioning of what everything means and how you feel and if those feelings are reciprocated or not. The idea that the person you thought you were the whole time, ends up being a completely different person. It's tough! Dahlia Adler does a great job of balancing the really emotional and tense moments with lighthearted fun and inspiring moments. Jasmine and Lara's relationship in the flashbacks is so amazing and lovely and its journey through the summer was so organic and natural. Lara's friends were unique and fun and multi-layered, full-dimensional people. They had their own personalities, interests, talents, and feelings. So often friends get pushed to the side in romance novels of any age range, and Adler was able to accomplish all this in less than 300 pages. Incredible. I honestly can't wait to read her next book especially if it is written anything like this is.

This was such a fun book! It's so important for young adults to see good bisexual representation in literature. The characters felt very real and still fun. I loved seeing the connection to music throughout the book. The narrator also did a wonderful job. This is great as an audiobook! I'll be recommending this one a lot this summer!

The story was ok but I did not like the narrator. They sounded much older to me than the characters they were trying to portray and I just didn't like the way they read the book.

This audio was wonderful. It played like a movie in my head. I loved all of the characters and was invested in Lara's dielama. I definitely appreciated how this F/F YA was told and will for sure recommend it.

I received an audiobook arc form of this and really enjoyed my time with it! I basically just spent an evening listening to the entire book! The narrator did an excellent job and I definitely hope to listen to more from them.

As for the actual novel, we follow Lara during her senior year of high school as all of her dreams seem to finally be coming true. She’s now gotten the attention of her years long crush on the school’s popular boy but... she also can’t stop thinking about the girl she spent the summer with. Especially when that girl ends up moving to her town and is now enrolled in the same high school.

At first, I was wary of the rep when I realized that our mc didn’t know they liked girls but I quickly realized that this story wasn’t about realizing everything all at once. This showed us how people explore their sexuality and honestly it was refreshing. In the queer YA contemporary that I’ve read, it seems like the main characters usually have already figured everything out with their sexuality so seeing the before of that, brought me back to my own days of questioning and exploring and figuring it out. Lara doesn’t use any labels by the end and that is more than okay. You don’t need labels to love anyone. Loved all the positive sex talk in here too! I don’t see it that often in young adult contemporary.

I did grow frustrated at the miscommunication trope used in here but I realize that these are teenagers and putting things off until you explode is kind of how things go. I definitely can relate to that! Super glad there was no cheating involved in this, I was slightly worried about that upon realizing this was a love triangle.

Overall, I enjoyed this queer, funny and realistic story about self-discovery, friendship and learning that sometimes figuring life out is hard but to look for those beautiful, shining moments when you can.

3.5/5⭐️

I went into this book completely blind and ended up really enjoying it. It's a really sweet story about being confused about sexuality and that really, it's ok to be confused.
The main character Lara comes back to school after a summer spent exploring her sexuality with her mom's boss' daughter Jasmine. She doesn't think she will ever see her again until she walks into Lara's school and sees Lara flirting with her crush of 6 years Chase. Lara is over the moon that her crush now wants to go on a date with her and confused at the cold shoulder Jasmine is giving her. No one even knows Lara and Jasmine know each other.
I really loved how confused Lara was about who she had feelings for and what those feelings meant. I feel like all we hear about is how people knew so and so was gay since they were 5, but we really don't hear a ton about people really not knowing if they are gay or lesbian or bi and really working through those feelings. To be honest at the beginning I didn't like Jasmine because it really felt like she was trying to deny that she even knew Lara. I was honestly rooting for her and Chase. I think the way the story was done was great, it switched between then and now. Through the then parts we really got to see how Lara and Jasmine's relationship started and I felt like I really got to see how Jasmine felt in the "now" part before Lara did. I came to really like Jasmine. I also really liked Lara's friends for the most part. Shannon was kind of a bee-yotch and Gia wasn't in it a lot, but they were all incredibly loyal to each other. I absolutely loved Kiki. She was one of my favorite characters if not my favorite. Lara's mom was also absolutely wonderful and I loved her relationship with Lara. Even Chase was a great character. By the end you kind of wanted him to just be a jerk so you could root for Lara and Jasmine, but he was just a really good guy.
Like I said, this book switches between the then and now and I really enjoyed both parts. In the then part (over the summer) we really get to see Lara open up and gain her own confidence without being around her school friends. Her summer just seemed absolutely wonderful, going to parties, meeting some great friends, going with Jasmine to help with her photography, reading. In the now part, it really seems like Lara is getting everything she ever wanted, but it just doesn't seem like enough anymore because of that confidence we see her find over the summer. It just all seemed very real.
This was absolutely an adorable, real book with some great relationships and I'm so glad I was able to give it a listen!

This was a very melodramatic ya romance dealing with sexuality and discovery and I LOVED it.

To start with this is VERY dramatic (and cringy at times) but teenage relationships are weird and awkward. The pacing of this book is perfection but even better is the character work on this book. The protagonist is very complicated but stereotypical at the same time. While she has a very typical internal dialogue for a teenage girl in a ya novel, she is very interesting and I really liked the themes of self-discovery and how it tied up in the end. In addition to that listening to this book was a pleasure and the narrator does a perfect job bringing the character in life. The only thing that I didn't like was the "forced" at times diversity because it felt that the author was just checking out a list.