Format: ebook
Published: August 26th, 2025
Age: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 1/5 Stars
I really struggled with this one, and if it wasn’t so close to the end of the year, it would have been a DNF.
Allegra Brooks is an incredibly famous actress after starring in an implied romantasy TV show. Looking for a normal teenage summer, she heads to her parents’ hometown of Lake Pristine, where her father runs a bookshop, and the summer features the annual book festival, run by said bookshop including bookseller Jonah Thorne. Allegra and Jonah instantly clash, but they each have a secret: Allegra is swapping emails with a charming bookseller who can’t possibly be Jonah, while Jonah is emailing a mysterious woman he believes works in social media. Oh, and both Jonah and Allegra are autistic. Which we are reminded of. Constantly. Like, every other page at minimum.
This gives Jonah the perfect excuse to act like an arse (apparently). He’s snobbish and critical, especially to Allegra. Who keeps getting told by others that he’s not really like that, he’s a nice guy really. Allegra seeks refuge in the emails, which she thinks are coming from Simon, the other bookseller. There are times where Simon comes across as a bit shitty, too, but Allegra puts it down to a public performance compared to his emails, not even considering the same could apply to Jonah.
Almost all of the other characters are portrayed as neurotypical arseholes, except for a slightly older girl who comes in as a bit of a deus ex machina character for Allegra, who also happens to be autistic. The autistic characters are constantly ‘othered’, and it’s not clear at times what the actual relationships are between any of the characters – Jonah doesn’t seem to like anyone, and has been treated shit by Simon in the past, but we get this weird thing where Simon clearly likes Allegra, we’re told he’s previously gone after girls Jonah liked, then at the end Simon reveals he knew Jonah liked Allegra, despite the fact Jonah has treated her like crap the whole time! It’s all really, really messy. There’s a hint of ‘not like other girls’ to Allegra, too, where she’s not flawed or petty or anything compared to other characters, but is always the bigger person, doing nice things for them and it gets a bit exhausting? It’s also unclear why she’s so famous. Like, at a certain point, it’s either a choice to reach that level (and Allegra is clearly uncomfortable with her level of fame), or it’s pushed by others, especially parents with child stars, but Allegra’s parents are so detached from her life. They are, actually, pretty awful parents! They allow Allegra to go flying around the world on her own at the age of 13, and all characters act like her fame is just something that happened and is kind of inconvenient.
The geography was also a mess. It’s not clear where Lake Pristine is – it’s one of those places where it feels it could be the USA, it could be the UK, and though some writers can really pull off that not-quite-either, transatlantic setting, it absolutely doesn’t work here. ‘Lake Pristine’ is supposedly this remote small-town where most the kids can’t wait to leave, but usually end up at the same local college/university. Yet it’s a short drive from the nearby unnamed city, where Allegra has an apartment and her mother lives, though they haven’t seen each other for a good while by the start of the novel. And despite the short distance, it was enough to drive Allegra’s parents apart and result in Allegra not seeing her father for years. Guessing he couldn’t be bothered to visit when she was in the city?
There’s no good reason for Allegra never having visited Lake Pristine. Jonah, on the other hand, never wants to leave this place, content with his bookseller job and the boss who puts a lot of trust in him. Like, A LOT, considering Jonah is still a teenager. He basically runs the book festival, sort of, and the ‘festival committee’ is made up of Allegra’s dad, her, Jonah and Simon. So one adult and three teens. But Allegra’s bookseller dad is icing Jonah out, for flimsy reasons that pop up later and don’t really make any sense.
There is so much of this book that hasn’t been thought through, and it feels very rushed. It’s all over the place at parts, things barely hang together, and it’s too often telling, not showing. Overall, I unfortunately wouldn’t recommend this one.
Reading Challenge
Romance Readers Diversity Challenge 2025 ❤️
Prompt: A book with autism representation
Progress: 11/12
Unwrapping Words 