THE SUMMER GIRLFRIEND - Kristina Forest
Heart Beach (Book #1)
Berkley Bublishing
BUY
Jennifer Brown (A)
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
REVIEW: Noelle Lewis does not have time for beach vacations or lazy summer afternoons — she is too busy piecing her financial life back together after losing her bookseller job. Her side hustle as a stand-in bridesmaid barely covers tuition, so when Jeremiah Smith II offers to pay her to pose as his girlfriend for a weekend at his family's summer house in Heart Beach, New Jersey, she accepts. It is supposed to be simple, transactional, and temporary.
Jeremiah is the grandson of the founder of Smith's Sweets, a beloved Black-owned baked goods company, and he is carrying the weight of a grief he never got the chance to resolve — a painful falling out with his late grandfather that haunts him still. What begins as a convenient arrangement stretches across an entire summer, and what neither of them planned for is how real everything begins to feel. Kristina Forest takes the fake dating trope and breathes fresh, warm life into it with characters who feel genuinely worth knowing and a family at the center of the story that you will not want to leave.
Noelle is immediately endearing. She is practical, grounded, and not waiting to be rescued — she is working, planning, and building, and stumbling into something unexpected and wonderful feels entirely earned. She is easy to root for precisely because she feels so real.
Jeremiah is a beautifully layered hero. Beneath the charm and the family name is a man still reckoning with loss, regret, and the question of who he wants to be outside of the legacy he was born into. His grief over his grandfather gives this story genuine emotional substance, and Forest handles it with a tenderness that elevates the romance into something deeper and more lasting.
What I loved most — and what stayed with me long after the final page — is the Smith family itself. Forest renders them with such warmth, humor, and specificity that they become as much a reason to keep reading as the romance. The family pride surrounding Smith's Sweets, a Black-owned business built across generations, is woven through the story with real reverence and authenticity. The history, the legacy, the complicated feelings that come with inheriting something meaningful — all of it gives the book a richness and cultural grounding that sets it apart. This is the kind of family story that makes you feel something, and Forest never lets it get lost beneath the romance. It lives right alongside it, and the two are better for each other because of it.
THE SUMMER GIRLFRIEND is feel-good romance at its finest — sweet without being saccharine, fun without being shallow, and anchored by a family legacy with genuine heart.
8th June 2026 | romcol@caribsurf.com | romcol1962@gmail.com
Jeremiah is the grandson of the founder of Smith's Sweets, a beloved Black-owned baked goods company, and he is carrying the weight of a grief he never got the chance to resolve — a painful falling out with his late grandfather that haunts him still. What begins as a convenient arrangement stretches across an entire summer, and what neither of them planned for is how real everything begins to feel. Kristina Forest takes the fake dating trope and breathes fresh, warm life into it with characters who feel genuinely worth knowing and a family at the center of the story that you will not want to leave.
Noelle is immediately endearing. She is practical, grounded, and not waiting to be rescued — she is working, planning, and building, and stumbling into something unexpected and wonderful feels entirely earned. She is easy to root for precisely because she feels so real.
Jeremiah is a beautifully layered hero. Beneath the charm and the family name is a man still reckoning with loss, regret, and the question of who he wants to be outside of the legacy he was born into. His grief over his grandfather gives this story genuine emotional substance, and Forest handles it with a tenderness that elevates the romance into something deeper and more lasting.
What I loved most — and what stayed with me long after the final page — is the Smith family itself. Forest renders them with such warmth, humor, and specificity that they become as much a reason to keep reading as the romance. The family pride surrounding Smith's Sweets, a Black-owned business built across generations, is woven through the story with real reverence and authenticity. The history, the legacy, the complicated feelings that come with inheriting something meaningful — all of it gives the book a richness and cultural grounding that sets it apart. This is the kind of family story that makes you feel something, and Forest never lets it get lost beneath the romance. It lives right alongside it, and the two are better for each other because of it.
THE SUMMER GIRLFRIEND is feel-good romance at its finest — sweet without being saccharine, fun without being shallow, and anchored by a family legacy with genuine heart.
8th June 2026 | romcol@caribsurf.com | romcol1962@gmail.com
