Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

Synopsis

The premise: Justin believes he’s cursed — everyone he breaks up with immediately finds their soulmate next. Emma, a travel nurse, believes she has the same curse from the other direction. They connect online, agree to test the theory by dating for the summer, and structure it with actual negotiated terms: four dates, one required open-mouth kiss (his to initiate, not hers), pre- and post-date surveys.

Series context: Technically marketed as a standalone, but it’s Book 3 in the loosely connected Part of Your World series set in the same hospital-adjacent universe — earlier characters (including the leads from Book 1) show up and matter to the plot, so go in expecting continuity even though the packaging undersells it.

Setting: Minnesota — lake house, real winters, real bugs the marketing conveniently forgets exist.

Why We Loved It

Justin’s care for Emma never reads as controlling, even though he’s constantly managing her experience. He gives her outs at every turn — options with each choice, “I’m going without you, you don’t have to come” before a hard family event — without ever treating her as fragile or making decisions for her. One host drew a direct line to Red in Get a Life, Chloe Brown and Adam in The Love Hypothesis: a pattern across several romance heroes of genuine compassion paired with real personality, rather than compassion standing in for a flatter, blander character.

The forehead-kiss runner is doing more work than it looks like. They’ve agreed the summer ends once he gives her an open-mouth kiss — so he deliberately keeps giving her forehead kisses instead, stringing out the “curse test” because he doesn’t actually want it to end. It becomes a running joke (Emma’s best friend eventually meets him and immediately clocks him as “forehead kiss guy”) that’s genuinely charming without ever feeling manipulative — he’s managing his own feelings, not withholding anything from her.

Neither lead is written as the villain when the relationship falls apart. When Emma leaves — her entire understanding of her own life turns out to be built on a lie, and she needs to process that before she can show up fully for Justin or his family — the book resists the easy version of this beat where the person who leaves reads as cowardly or insufficiently in love. Both hosts were explicit that this restraint is rare: leaving to actually deal with real trauma, rather than staying because love should conquer everything, is the more honest and more responsible choice, even though it’s the harder one to write sympathetically.

The playfulness survives the heavy material. Parental neglect, real PTSD, real family responsibility are all on the page — but so is a running joke about a billboard nicknamed “the Toilet King,” complete with matching t-shirts and staged photos. The tonal balance is deliberate: heavy themes don’t flatten the day-to-day lightness of the relationship, and the lightness doesn’t undercut how seriously the book takes its harder material.

Where We've Discussed This

Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez: Rosebushes, Raccoons, and Forehead Kisses — Two people who believe they’re each other’s “cure” for a dating curse agree to 4 dates and one open-mouth kiss. Here’s why it works… and why it made Nikki cry.