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by Ali Brady (July 9, 2024) – Thank you to @berkleyromance and @prhaudio for the #gifted print and audio copies of this truly wonderful love letter to summer camp. Below is my honest review.

Jesse and Hillary became best friends as teens during transformative years at summer camp and dreamed of becoming camp counselors. Then, Hillary chose a different path; the two haven’t spoken in a decade. Now the camp director, Jesse has devoted her life to the camp but the owners recently passing away and their children have decided to close the camp and sell the land. That’s when Jesse chooses that this last summer will be dedicated to one last farewell for all the adults that attended as kids – ADULT SUMMER CAMP! Thousands of alums are set to return, including Hillary. As Jesse and Hillary spend the summer repairing their fractured friendship, Hillary finds herself in a very stringy no-strings-attached situation with Cooper, the camp chef. At the same time, Jesse keeps trying to deny her attraction to Luke, the grumpy author renting a cabin for the summer.

If you’ve ever been to summer camp, you will want to read this one. Brady gives us all the feels of childhood – games, pranks, swimming, campfire songs – but with grownup attendees. She also miraculously gives us four complex main characters, two rich romances, one life-defining friendship, an epic found family, and a cause they all rally behind – and does so in a way where you feel like they each get plenty of development. I loved that each of our main characters (Jessie, Hillary, Cooper, and Luke) had reasons that drove them back to camp, and the others at camp helped them work through them. There’s also a fun back-story to one of the characters that nods to a beloved character in another book, thus connecting them into the same fictional universe. I just loved it.

On top of this being a great book, it is co-narrated by 2 of my favorites – Brittany Presley and Karissa Vacker. They are perfect.