Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

By @annabelmonaghan

This book feels like summer and is a perfect beach read. It checks all those summer romance boxes – first love, second chance romance, summer loves, and a sleepy beach town. It is my second Abigail Monaghan book in as many months, and I don’t know what I’ll do without a new one in June. Monaghan has a fantastic way of delivering a book that is both a light-hearted romance and a deeper conversation about what it means to live the life you want to live (As she did with Nora Goes Off Script).

Sam was raised as the daughter of a quirky artist family that splits their time between NYC during the school year and a small beach town in the summers. During these magical summers, Sam is curious and artistic, plotting a future of creative adventure. She falls in love with Wyatt, her childhood friend next door. Their teenage romance forges a powerful bond that both believe will last a lifetime until events outside their control rip their families apart and put them on divergent paths. Years later, when their lives again intersect at the beach, Sam must analyze how much of her life in the present is a reaction to her past and decide who she wants to be moving forward.

This closed-door romance is a dual POV, dual timeline, first love, second chance, small-town charmer. In the days since I finished reading it, not only have I continued to think about the characters, but I’ve also been thinking about who I thought I’d be when I was a teenager, how I’ve evolved, and what parts of my past self I wish I could bring forward into who I am today.

Many thanks to Net Galley, Putnam Books, and Annabel Monaghan for the opportunity to read this novel in advance of its 6/6/2023 release in exchange for my honest review.