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sunwhoohoo's review
4.0
4.5
i think i liked this book because you could tell the two characters were so comfortable with each other. because they were honest in the beginning of knowing that they didn’t want the same thing in romance i think their honesty made it so much more refreshing to read and their conversations so much deeper. i really had so many butterfly moments. also i loved how shira and tyler both helped each other break out of their shells and become better people. only thing that threw me off was the fact that he’s in college and shes in high school which was kind of wtf but.
i think i liked this book because you could tell the two characters were so comfortable with each other. because they were honest in the beginning of knowing that they didn’t want the same thing in romance i think their honesty made it so much more refreshing to read and their conversations so much deeper. i really had so many butterfly moments. also i loved how shira and tyler both helped each other break out of their shells and become better people. only thing that threw me off was the fact that he’s in college and shes in high school which was kind of wtf but.
vivilevone's review
4.75
i actually LOVED LOVED LOVED this book. it was deeply and thoroughly predictable and yet that didn't make me like it any less?? the shira/tyler dynamic hit soooo right and all the shira & olivia moments made me go :D
lesserjoke's review
2.0
I was hoping this would be a cute little Hanukkah read, but it's instead been a source of perpetual frustration and discomfort for me. The basic premise is that the narrator is desperate to get with the crush who'll be visiting her grandparents' house over winter break, but because she's convinced she's bad at flirting -- whatever that means -- she asks her hot jerk of a neighbor to give her some lessons on that first. Obviously, the two of them end up falling for one another instead, and the plot is full of those tired rom-com tropes about hurt feelings over miscommunication and mistaken ideas of the other person's seriousness / interest level.
I suppose I knew to expect all that going in, while also assuming from the title that this would be a festive Jewish love story. And that's true, to an extent. The main character is Jewish, as is her original purported romantic interest, and we get to see a lot of her big Jewish family celebrating the holiday together. But the guy she hangs out with for most of the book is Christian, and she spends quite a while educating him (and perhaps the imagined reader) on elements of Judaism 101. It feels more like a dry and unnecessary lesson than the rich #ownvoices immersion I'd ideally wanted from this novel.
My bigger issue concerns the ages of the ensemble. Our protagonist is a 16-year-old high school junior, whereas the young men opposite her are 18/19 and both in college. That's not an age-gap that I'd say needs to be inherently off-limits in fictional romance, but it's at a minimum problematic -- literally raising relevant problems -- in a way never addressed by the text. These people are at very different stages of their lives, and although the heroine balks when either of her beaus tries moving beyond kissing, the discussion is limited to what she wants / is comfortable with, not their respective maturity levels or the legality of the situation. No one bats an eye at her underage drinking with them, either. And given everyone's wealth in this exclusive Nantucket enclave, it all reads a bit like an exercise in the excesses of the uber-privileged.
Add to that the obnoxious behavior of the fellow Shira ultimately picks -- like repeatedly calling her by a nickname she's told him she doesn't like, a major red flag for ignoring of boundaries in general -- and a long subplot about research into local whaling history that ends with the girl insisting her interpretation of certain scant facts must be correct, and the whole thing is just a mess. It apparently functions as a loose sequel to the author's earlier YA piece The Summer of Lost Letters too, and while I haven't read that one, I think it would have taken a great deal of returning good will to get me to enjoy this follow-up.
[Content warning for homophobia.]
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I suppose I knew to expect all that going in, while also assuming from the title that this would be a festive Jewish love story. And that's true, to an extent. The main character is Jewish, as is her original purported romantic interest, and we get to see a lot of her big Jewish family celebrating the holiday together. But the guy she hangs out with for most of the book is Christian, and she spends quite a while educating him (and perhaps the imagined reader) on elements of Judaism 101. It feels more like a dry and unnecessary lesson than the rich #ownvoices immersion I'd ideally wanted from this novel.
My bigger issue concerns the ages of the ensemble. Our protagonist is a 16-year-old high school junior, whereas the young men opposite her are 18/19 and both in college. That's not an age-gap that I'd say needs to be inherently off-limits in fictional romance, but it's at a minimum problematic -- literally raising relevant problems -- in a way never addressed by the text. These people are at very different stages of their lives, and although the heroine balks when either of her beaus tries moving beyond kissing, the discussion is limited to what she wants / is comfortable with, not their respective maturity levels or the legality of the situation. No one bats an eye at her underage drinking with them, either. And given everyone's wealth in this exclusive Nantucket enclave, it all reads a bit like an exercise in the excesses of the uber-privileged.
Add to that the obnoxious behavior of the fellow Shira ultimately picks -- like repeatedly calling her by a nickname she's told him she doesn't like, a major red flag for ignoring of boundaries in general -- and a long subplot about research into local whaling history that ends with the girl insisting her interpretation of certain scant facts must be correct, and the whole thing is just a mess. It apparently functions as a loose sequel to the author's earlier YA piece The Summer of Lost Letters too, and while I haven't read that one, I think it would have taken a great deal of returning good will to get me to enjoy this follow-up.
[Content warning for homophobia.]
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
airiel's review
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
My fav part was the history about the relative!
bickie's review
I wish there was not so much underage drinking, and the age difference (girl in hs/boys in college) between the love interests is a bit uncomfortable.
I think my students who enjoy romances would enjoy this one, though.
I think my students who enjoy romances would enjoy this one, though.
bookedandstarred's review against another edition
4.0
While some parts of the book I could do without, I enjoyed this one a lot! This gave me the Neil and Rowan (from Today Tonight and Tomorrow) dynamics that I’m missing a lot in YA romances.