cool all year round

Lara is starting her senior year, and she is ready for it to be amazing. She had a good summer, making new friends and enjoying her time on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But that was then, and this is now, and she’s back in New York City with her old friends and her longtime crush Chase Harding. Football player, popular, handsome Chase Harding. And when Lara shows up to that first day of school, Chase starts flirting with her.

After crushing on him for three years, Lara has Chase flirting with her. It’s everything she dreamed about. Until last summer changed everything.

After planning on spending her summer in the city, hanging out with her friends and hand-selling her favorite books in her favorite bookstore, Lara’s plans changed. Her mother’s boss was spending the summer with his daughter at their home in the Outer Banks. He wanted Lara’s mother to come and work from there, and Lara was invited also. Well, “invited” is the nice way to say it. At only 17, she didn’t have a choice but to take her mother’s boss up on his offer. So she packed a bag and headed to North Carolina.

Immediately, she meets the boss’s daughter, Jasmine, who invites Lara out to a party with her friends. Lara likes everyone right away, although Jasmine is a little distant. But little by little, with time spent in the pool, watching movies, eating, and laughing, they find more common ground. Jasmine is a photographer, and she offers to hire Lara to be her assistant for the summer. Lara agrees, as she lost her part-time bookstore job to come to North Carolina, and because she’s interested in watching Jasmine work. Lara appreciates how Jasmine looks at the world through her camera lens.

But now it’s fall, and Lara is back in New York. She’s going to school. She’s making plans with her old friends and flirting with Chase. She’s wearing some of the clothes that Jasmine had given her, working at the bookstore and giving graphic novel recommendations based on books Jasmine introduced her to, and generally thinking about Jasmine. Which isn’t really a surprise, given Jasmine has showed up at her high school.

Lara tries to wrap her head about why Jasmine had suddenly moved in with her dad instead of going back to Ashville with her mother. Or why Jasmine didn’t let her know she was coming to Lara’s school. Or how to tell her friends that she spent her summer fooling around with a girl. Or how to resolve the fact that she still has feelings for Jasmine while she’s finally making headway with Chase.

But Jasmine ignores Lara, making Lara feel like maybe their time together hadn’t meant as much to Jasmine as it did to Lara. So now that Lara ahs everything she’s wanted for years, does she still want it? Or has she changed that dream of dating Chase her senior year for something else?

Cool for the Summer is a teen romance about choosing between the thing you always thought you wanted and the new dream. It’s about being true to your desires and going after what you really want. It’s about being a teenager and seeing the world open up to you in new and surprising ways. And it’s about falling in love.

When I first started reading Cool for the Summer, I had some trouble connecting with Lara. So I switched to the audio book, and I had a much better time, getting caught up in the two love stories, the summer and then the fall. The more I listened, the more I liked these characters and wanted them to find happiness. Narrator Natalie Naudus brought Lara to life and drew me in to this bright, fun story. And then I couldn’t wait to get to the end to find out how it would all come together.

Egalleys for Cool for the Summer were provided by Wednesday Books through NetGalley, but I bought the audio book myself through Audible.