A lovely, winsome tale about a Summer That Changes Everything, Summer Girls is about life in a small beach town and showcases the ordinary-extraordinariness of falling in real love with the most unlikely suspect. While it’s not A-level material thanks to its rather plain dryness, it’s still a fine romance that most teenagers will be happy to give a read to.

Cassandra “Cass” Adler is a working class girl who lives in a summer paradise year-round. She knows better than to fall for a summer girl – a tourist who spends the summer on the island and then leaves when fall sets in. They’re almost always rich and snobby, and almost always wreck the atmosphere of the island. She’s working as a beach parking lot attendant to help save for college.

Birdie Gordon is an influencer who is also the DAUGHTER of an influencer. Her father George – a real estate developer – has brought her with him to the island over the summer as a kind of punishment because Birdie crashed his expensive sports car while in the process of having the Worst Night Ever (she found out her boyfriend was cheating the same night). To de-spoil Birdie, George hires Cass (through her father) to watch out for Birdie while she’s on the island and make sure she does her job as a parking attendant.

Initially, Birdie and Cass get on like oil and water. They come from different walks of life and have nothing in common. But when the summer works its magic, will they be able to find affinity with each other?

This is a sweet-natured romance, and you definitely know where it’s going. A have-not falls in love with a have-much. But Summer Girls raises some class questions that it dares not answer, and its romance comes together so quickly the conflict mainly comes from miscommunication, that bugaboo that haunts far too many romances.

I liked Cass a lot; Birdie I had to warm up to. The love between these two goes through an extremely brief period of doubt, only to tumble into insta-love. Enter the big mis and a poor substitute for conflict.

That’s why I can’t give Summer Girls anything over C+. It’s sweet, it’s cute, it’s easy to swallow, but like the summer it slips by without leaving much of a memory behind.