Book Title: The Summer Girlfriend
Author: Kristina Forest
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Publishing Date: June 2026
Some romances ask you to race through them. Others ask you to sit with them. The Summer Girlfriend belongs firmly in the latter camp.
There is a remarkably steady rhythm to the way this novel unfolds. Every conversation, every emotional beat and every revelation arrives with an almost unhurried confidence that makes the novel feel less like a series of dramatic set pieces and more like simply spending time alongside these characters. It isn’t trying to manufacture three or four spectacular moments to justify the journey. Instead, every chapter feels equally worth savouring.
Part of that rhythm comes from Kristina Forest’s choice of third-person narration.
Romance books are so often written in dual first-person POV that third person almost feels refreshing. It’s also the harder choice. Without direct access to every thought running through the protagonists’ heads, there’s naturally more distance between the reader and the characters. That distance creates ambiguity. It asks readers to fill in the blanks instead of having every feeling explicitly narrated for them.
How were people like him just walking around among the rest of society, beguiling bystanders with their charm and attentive questions?
Forest handles that challenge beautifully. Rather than telling us what Jeremiah or Noelle are feeling, she lets us infer it through their choices, observations and conversations. A line like “How were people like him just walking around among the rest of society, beguiling bystanders with their charm and attentive questions?” tells us so much about Noelle’s growing attraction without ever feeling like an exaggerated internal monologue. It feels exactly like the sort of passing observation someone might genuinely have.
The realism is the novel’s greatest strength, not waiting for the dessert at the end for a dramatic flourish, but peppered with sweet moments throughout.
This fake-dating trope takes the road not taken
Talking of sweets, desserts happen to sit at the heart of this story as well. Jeremiah Smith II is the grandson of the founder of Smith Sweets, a beloved family baking company whose history is woven deeply into his family’s identity. Following his grandfather’s death, and burdened by regrets about their final interactions, Jeremiah has distanced himself from both the family business and, emotionally, from his family itself. He’s trying to build something on his own, determined to prove that his ambitions and abilities exist independently of the Smith legacy.
Meanwhile, Noelle is working at a bookstore while saving enough money to return to university to become a librarian. Alongside her bookshop job, she also has an unconventional side hustle: getting paid to be strangers’ fake bridesmaids. It’s a fun twist on the fake relationship trope, turning emotional labour into an actual business model.
Maybe that was another reason that Noelle was good at this particular side hustle. She knew how loneliness could house itself inside your body and sit on top of your heart.
Their paths cross on Noelle’s final shift at the bookstore, where Jeremiah wanders in looking for a copy of Dracula. There’s an immediate spark between them, but refreshingly, it never tips into instalove or instalust. Instead, it simply feels like two people discovering that conversation comes easily. When Jeremiah later offers to hire Noelle to pose as his girlfriend for a family vacation, the arrangement feels surprisingly plausible because the groundwork has already been laid.
And what follows continues to embrace realism over spectacle.
In a short period of time, he’d gotten used to her warm presence. He’d become accustomed to the sound of her laugh and the boost of serotonin that shot to his brain whenever he’d made her smile. His hands had become familiar with the feel of hers as they’d threaded their fingers and pressed their palms together countless times.
The fake dating isn’t rushed. They actually discuss logistics. They establish boundaries. They communicate. Their relationship develops through conversations rather than grand romantic gestures, and I appreciated how emotionally mature both protagonists are from the outset.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper
The family dynamics are equally nuanced.
The Smiths are wealthy, but they never become caricatures of the dysfunctional rich family. Everyone is carrying grief, expectations and regrets in different ways, and because the novel allows each relationship the space to breathe, there are no obvious villains here. Just complicated people trying to love one another while carrying their own emotional baggage.
Noelle’s perspective also keeps the wealth from feeling like wish fulfilment. Rather than rejecting the comforts around her or looking down on privilege, she’s honest about what those comforts mean to someone who hasn’t always had them. Again, it’s a small detail, but one that makes the emotional world feel grounded.
Moving the story from the city to the beach only reinforces that feeling of gentleness. The coastal setting slows everything down, allowing both the romance and the family story to unfold organically. It makes perfect sense that this is marketed as a summer romance—not because it’s filled with fireworks, but because it captures that specific feeling of spending long afternoons with nowhere urgent to be.
What impressed me most, though, was how honestly the novel handles love after disappointment. Noelle has been hurt before. Jeremiah is carrying years of guilt and unresolved grief. Neither suddenly decides they’ve found “the one” because the plot requires it. Instead, the novel acknowledges something romance readers often wonder: if someone once believed another person was their forever, how do they know this time is different.
But he wanted to stay in her orbit. What was she doing when they weren’t together? What was she thinking about? Was she thinking about him the way he increasingly thought about her?
The Summer Girlfriend doesn’t answer that question with grand declarations. It answers it through consistency, trust, communication and showing up for one another day after day. That’s ultimately what this novel is about.
If you’re looking for dramatic twists or heart-racing romantic highs, this probably won’t be the book that gives you that adrenaline rush. But if you’re looking for something soft, grounded and quietly reassuring — a romance that feels like spending an afternoon by the sea rather than riding a roller coaster — The Summer Girlfriend is exactly that kind of beach read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance review copy (ARC). All opinions expressed are my own.