The world is a crazy place right now, and I’m so happy to have my husband, my dog and my baby boy in insolation with me…as well as books, of course. I highly recommend the whole world just hole up with a book as long as we possibly can to flatten the curve on this pandemic—reading is a great way to get immersed in another world in order to feel a little less stir-crazy.

Though summer feels like a long-time coming, I felt perfectly ready to read my first book of the year about summer vacation. I knew from the get-go that Meet Me at Midnight by Jessica Pennington (in stores April 7) was going to include my favourite trope: enemies to lovers, so I was ready to dive right in… pun not intended.

Synopsis
They have a love-hate relationship with summer.

Sidney and Asher should have clicked. Two star swimmers forced to spend their summers on a lake together sounds like the perfect match. But every summer it’s the same—in between cookouts and boat rides and family-imposed bonfires, Sidney and Asher spend the dog days of summer finding the ultimate ways to prank each other. And now, the summer after their senior year, they’re determined to make it the most epic summer yet.

But their plans are thrown in sudden jeopardy when their feud causes their families to be kicked out of their beloved lake houses. Once in their new accommodations, Sidney expects summer to continue as usual. But then she gets a note—Meet me at midnight. And Asher has a proposition for her: join forces for one last summer of epic pranks, against a shared enemy—the woman who kicked them out.

Their truce should make things simpler, but six summers of tormenting one another isn’t so easy to ignore. Kind of like the undeniable attraction growing between them.

My musings
I really, really enjoyed this book. My family used to rent a cottage in the summer when we were younger, and though I didn’t have quite the same experience as Sidney and Asher, I could relate to basically having a whole second life in those precious weeks while school was out.

Sidney and Asher were both likeable characters. Sidney was a “good girl” without being nauseatingly self-righteous, and Asher didn’t have a jerky bone in his body and was a secret romantic, which was adorably refreshing for a teenaged boy in print. I enjoyed that you got each of their perspectives and that there wasn’t a ton of information that one person kept from the other, if you know what I mean…it wasn’t like there were two completely different stories happening at the same time.

My only criticism, really, is that the end of the book did drag on a little. I understand, narratively, why it happened, but it felt like almost a different book because we were removed from the summer house setting. There could have been another way for the plot to come to a conclusion. That being said, it didn’t bother me too much—I still powered through this book faster than I have been.

Fans of YA, of summer reads and of my favourite enemies-to-lovers trope will definitely love this book. I highly recommend it!

4.5 STARS

“The war I call summer lasts exactly fifty-six days. It doesn’t end, and it only has two sides: mine and his.” —Jessica Pennington, Meet Me at Midnight

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Teen for the advanced copy, and to Kate Tandy on Unsplash for the featured photo of the dock at sunset.