gracie's Reviews > Just for the Summer

Just for the Summer is exactly what I imagine you'd get if you took all the worst parts of early 2010s Tumblr/Wattpad and ran them through a random tiktok buzzwords generator. The book reads like it was written in hopes that it becomes a movie, this is not a compliment.

Considering how much hype this book gets, I expected to get something more than 400 pages of pointless dialogue and trauma dumping with no actual plot in sight. Abby Jimenez' style of writing prioritizes dialogue over the prose and plot development and while it's quirky and fun in the beginning, it gets increasingly frustrating and boring the more of the book you read. There's so much plot holes and inconsistencies that you begin to wonder if there's a former book about the two mcs that you should have been aware of before starting Just for the Summer.

The author clearly believes that having her characters trauma dump over and over again will substitute for plot and it just doesn't work that way I fear. A vast majority of this book was just about the mcs and their issues, especially Emma and her relationship with her mom. It was exhausting to read, which admittedly might have been the point so kudos to the author, but when that's taking away from the romance in romance book?? maybe change how it's marketed to the public then!! We also did not need almost 10 chapters of Emma and Justin being sick. We should have been done with that in two chapters, three at the most. What's even worse is the conflict stretching out over half the book only for the resolution to be like 12 pages long...like are you kidding me?? It very much felt like a 'here damn' kind of ending and that made me even more mad.

Adding onto that the entire book is just one giant ad. The book was released only a couple months ago, it's too much of a coincidence that every single big name brand that were mentioned, in almost every chapter by the way, just so happened to be target names that are on the bds boycott list lol. And while this might not matter to everyone, it does to me. Reading a book pandering to zionists is not my idea of fun 😊.

I did not care for any of the characters, especially not Justin and Emma. They were both immature, which is insane cause they're supposed to be almost 30 year olds, and boring and seemed to only complain, complain, complain the whole book. Emma was such an infuriating character to read about. I don't think it's possible for someone THAT self absorbed and self centered to have a job in nursing, is it?? It was all about her since she's apparently the smallest person who ever lived. Justin was bearable for the first 6 or so chapters before he took a sharp turn from quirky nerd into invasive weirdo and just kept on getting worse from then on. Both of them had chemistry equivalent to reading a blank piece of paper, another thing that doesn't make sense since the author was clearly going for the 'love at first sight' shtick.

Other than a few long declarations of love that were clearly put there so that booktokers would post about it with the caption "need me a man like him fr", there's nothing of weight in this giant snoozefest of a book.
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pre-read:
I'm a bit late to the party but starting my first Abby Jimenez book. fingers crossed that it's good 🤞🏽✨