The Summer List

What makes a well-rounded character? The answers to that question are as varied as any character you can come up with. Ignatius P. Reilly, despite being a round person who's not particularly well, is still to my mind a well-rounded character. If I'm speaking to generics, I would say "having a sense that this person existed before the book started and will continue to exist after it ends" is pretty important, though in romance the latter half tends to be a bit forsaken for the "happily ever after" sort of squashing everything together in a warm little biscuit for you to eat and sit with.

The other part tends to be a character who's more than a stereotype or an archetype; one who can surprise you without it seeming it going entirely against already established motives or ways of being. An adverbial phrase I use a lot is "fully fleshed-out" (weirdly also commenting on body size, somehow? English is weird) – typically this means getting inside the head of the characters (for first-person perspectives), or getting enough of their background and ways of interacting with others and themselves (third-person) that we have an understanding of what makes them tick.

I hesitate to make Grand, Sweeping Generalizations about any genre, for the (to my mind) good reasons that a) I have not read every book and b) one always has to wonder how much of any observation about a trend is at least affected by both frequency illusion and/or confirmation bias. 

And so while I'll caveat it thusly, I do want to call out what seems to me a bit of a tendency to over-commit to nigh-crippling anxiety disorders, or a heavily reliance on neurodivergence as a primary if not (in some cases, though to be clear not in this book) sole defining characteristic.

I'm not slagging this book, mind! It's a perfectly cromulent YA romance, with some nice / funny / sweet moments around date ideas and milestone moments. I do think the characters are for the most part well-drawn, and Rose has a way of teasing out and exploring small flaws in her characters to both cathartic and interesting plot ends.

But if I'm being 100% honest, I felt like I've read the main character (Naomi) before. Part of that is absolutely on me and the number of similar books I've read. But coming somewhat close on the heels of having read Love is for Losers, Naomi just felt like a flatter version of Phoebe from that book.

That being said, I will call out the love interest main, Andrea, as being particularly well-written, with a slowly-teased out backstory that absolutely informs and drives all the decisions that came before we understood it, and closes the loop rather perfectly.

Maybe that's why Naomi stuck out for me so much? Andrea felt so vibrant and original that Naomi (who we're introduced to first and takes up more room in the book, if not by word count than certainly by presence) just sort of seems washed-out.

Nevertheless! The Summer List is still a solid YA romance novel that'll keep you warm in the coldest of those Canadian winters.

This review is for an advanced reader copy of the book, provided by the author.