Lina & June is a tender, moving, heartfelt novel at its core that details a friendship that undergoes a great deal over time. This story beautifully highlights how it feels to grow, change, and evolve and lose and then find one’s platonic soulmate through hurdles and obstacles that affect one’s identity and sense of self. Lina and June discover pieces of themselves in the places they frequent and in the moments they open up and lay themselves bare, an intimate understanding of the other coming to light sometimes at different intervals and sometimes all at once. This has many quotable passages that I found myself getting joyously lost in and I think you will too.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for an ARC.

When I started to get more present in reading, Wheeler’s Adelaide was one of the first books that really resonated with me and I have held that with me.

She once again does the same with Lina and June. Wheeler’s writing is so unpretentious but still goes into the psyche of the main characters. I absolutely love the focus on female friendships. It’s complex but can be so beautiful.

Truly loved reading this book and glad it hit me just as much as Adelaide.

"...you were my first great love story, you know." I absolutely love a book about female friendship and this one exceeded all expectations. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would! Like the main characters I also met my soulmate (my platonic best friend) in college and also shared a croissant at Balthazar.

The way Wheeler writes and creates characters that are so real is just unbelievable to me. I felt like I knew these women and I've never done this before but I turned off the page number and percentage read on my kindle because I was so enthralled I didn't want to know if I was getting close to the end. I could have read 1000 more pages about these characters. Every detail about being a millennial right out of college and the first grown up job feelings was so accurate.

I don't know if Wheeler is a fan of the amazon The Summer I Turned Pretty series but I definitely got shades of that when Lina was arriving in Paris and at the café with her luggage, and then again when she brought a date to her apartment and described their make out scene. Or maybe it's a year later and I'm still not over that show. But either way, I loved those mini (maybe unintended) references.

Wheeler's first book, Adelaide, was my favorite book of 2023 and although there are several months left of the year I'm confident in saying this will be my favorite book of 2026. Thank you so much to NetGalley and to St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this early!