Just for the Summer

Starred review from February 5, 2024
Bestseller Jimenez (Yours Truly) delivers an emotional tour de force in this intense tale of love, loss, and childhood trauma. Emma’s life has been defined by the chaos caused by her unstable mother, Amber, who abandoned her for long stretches of her childhood. Now a traveling nurse, Emma avoids putting down roots and doesn’t form emotional bonds outside of her best friend, Maddy. When she does date, her exes always seem to go on to find the love of their lives immediately after the breakup. After Emma and Maddy stumble on a Reddit thread from a man with the same “curse”—every woman he dates meets “the one” after dumping him—she impulsively reaches out to commiserate, putting her in the orbit of cute, funny, and strong Justin Dahl. Justin’s life is in a state of upheaval—his mother is about to serve a prison sentence for embezzlement and he’s taking custody of his young siblings—but he falls hard for Emma, who takes a temporary nursing gig in Minneapolis to explore their chemistry and hopefully break their shared curse. When all hell breaks loose in Emma’s life after shocking family secrets come to light, will their relationship withstand the emotional fallout? Jimenez has a clear-eyed and empathetic take on how childhood trauma can affect adult relationships, and keeps the story grounded in the characters’ complex and believable emotional realities. Readers will be deeply moved. (Apr.)This review has been updated to remove spoilers and correct the misspelling of a character’s name.

March 1, 2024

Best-selling Jimenez (Yours Truly) sets her newest rom-com at a cottage on a private island in Lake Minnetonka. There, Justin and Emma, who are dating each other just to try to break a curse (all their exes find true love after leaving them), find a lot more than they bargained for when deeper feelings develop. With a 300K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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March 1, 2024
For the last few years, every woman who dated Justin immediately found her romantic soul mate after breaking up with him. When Emma sees a social media post about Justin, she immediately slides into his DMs since she has the same problem. Everyone Emma has dated and then broken up with goes on to find true love. But what if Emma and Justin were to date each other for a month or so? Would their quirky romantic superpowers cancel each other out, and then Emma and Justin could each finally find a lasting love of their own? It is a proposal so crazy it just might work. With a perfect sense of literary aplomb and an abundance of deliciously sharp wit, Jimenez (Yours Truly, 2023) continues on an extraordinary upward trajectory with another gorgeously crafted contemporary romance. From moments of irresistible comic charm (a date with rescue kittens from the Bitty Kitty Brigade) to a compelling and compassionate story line that deftly and delicately deals with the impact of trauma on a person's emotional and physical well-being, Jimenez expertly balances humor and heart in this sublimely satisfying love story.

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March 15, 2024
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread. Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they're set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular "Am I the Asshole" Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he's cursed--women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She's delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they'll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character's family of origin. Justin's mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother's well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma's painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin's love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying. A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.

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