Just for the Summer

What's inside (10 sections)

1. The curse and the direct messages
2. A cottage on Lake Minnetonka
3. Three kids and sudden guardianship
4. Getting small and getting sick
5. The birthday, the DNA test, and Daniel
6. Six months in Wakan
7. What hit and what sagged
8. A note on the series
9. Key takeaways
10. FAQ

I grabbed Just for the Summer because the premise sounded like a group chat dare. A guy posts on Reddit that every woman he dates marries the next guy, a woman replies that the same thing happens to her with men, and they decide to date each other to cancel it out. It was a Good Morning America book club pick, which usually makes me hesitate, but a friend who likes romantic comedy with some teeth said this one actually goes heavy in the second half. She was right.

The edition I am summarizing is the Forever paperback published April 2, 2024, with 432 pages and ISBN 9781538704431. It is the third book in Abby Jimenez's Part of Your World series, after Part of Your World and Yours Truly, but it follows a new couple and reads fine on its own. Jimenez lives near Minneapolis and sets most of the story there in one summer, which matters because the lake, the hospital schedules, and Justin's family house all keep pulling the two leads into the same small orbit.

Emma is a traveling nurse in her late twenties who has built a life around leaving. She takes short contracts with her best friend Maddy, who is also a travel nurse and grew up as her foster sister. They were supposed to go to Hawaii next. Then Emma sees a popular Am I the Asshole thread from a Minneapolis guy and gets stuck on it.

Justin Dahl is 29, a software engineer, living in a studio across from a giant Toilet King billboard that becomes a running joke. He has a rescue dog, a little Brussels Griffon, named Brad after a former roommate. Human Brad is marrying Justin's ex. That tells you everything about Justin's dating history in about ten seconds. Every woman he dates breaks up with him and then almost immediately meets her husband. Friends tease him about it. Then strangers on Reddit run with it.

The curse and the direct messages

Justin did not post asking for dating advice. He posted asking if he was wrong for naming his dog Brad. The comments fixated on the backstory instead. Ex after ex, same pattern. Dump Justin, meet the one. Emma reads it and messages him because the same pattern has followed her with men. Her exes move on fast too.

Their messages turn into calls pretty quickly. Jimenez writes those early exchanges with a lot of banter and very little filter, which helps because the plan they make is absurd if you say it out loud. They will date for the summer. Four dates, a kiss, then a breakup. The idea is that their bad luck will cancel out and they will both be free to meet their real people afterward.

Justin agrees partly as a joke and partly because he likes talking to her. Emma has a more practical reason. She can choose where her next nursing contract goes. She talks Maddy into switching Hawaii for Minneapolis for six weeks. Maddy agrees, though Maddy is protective and skeptical from the start. Maddy has seen Emma's mother wreck Emma's mood from three time zones away. She does not want a summer project turning into another wound.

There is a small detail I liked here. Justin deliberately does not kiss Emma early even when he could. He admits later he was stalling because he wanted more dates out of her. That sounds manipulative in summary, but on the page it reads as nervous and obvious. He falls fast and he knows the rules they set do not give him much time.

A cottage on Lake Minnetonka

Emma and Maddy rent a cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka. It belongs to Neil, who is the chief of surgery at the Minneapolis hospital where they will work. You can only get there by pontoon, which sounds romantic until Emma gets sick later and the isolation turns scary. For now it is cute. Small kitchen, lake views, loons in the morning, a landlord who shows up on a yacht.

Amber calls just as they arrive. Amber is Emma's mother, erratic and neglectful for most of Emma's childhood, then absent for two years before this sudden call. She says she found a beloved stuffed animal from Emma's childhood and will mail it. Emma lights up in a way that makes Maddy tense. Maddy knows this cycle. Amber disappears, reappears sweet, needs something, explodes, disappears again.

Emma starts her shifts, Justin plans elaborate dates, and the curse plan starts to feel thin almost immediately. Their first lunch is awkward in the normal way. What do you do with your hands, how much do you tell a stranger about your mother, do you admit you looked up his Reddit history. Then it loosens. Justin is funny without trying to perform. Emma is guarded but curious. She tells him some of the childhood stuff in pieces. Left alone as a kid for stretches. Foster care. Ended up with Maddy's moms. Amber never really came back to claim her.

Shortly after that, Amber surprises Emma by showing up in Minneapolis. At first Emma is thrilled. Her mom is here, she looks good, she says she is in therapy, she wants to do better. Then Amber meets Neil and latches on. Neil is wealthy, steady, a little lonely, and Amber is charming when she wants to be. She starts painting a rose mural in his big house and filling it with flowers to make it feel homey. Emma tries to warn her that dating her boss and landlord is messy. Amber brushes it off.

Three kids and sudden guardianship

Justin takes Emma to dinner at his family house and tells her what is coming. His mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement. He will become the legal guardian of his three much younger siblings. Alex is sixteen and easygoing on the surface. Sarah is a preteen, angry and sharp, quick to test Emma. Chelsea is four, sweet and clingy, with separation anxiety that spikes whenever routines change.

A week later it happens. His mom goes in. Justin moves out of his studio and into the house to hold things together. He takes the kids to Great Wolf Lodge right after, trying to give them a normal memory in a bad week. Emma and Maddy spend a day there with them. Slides, noise, wet towels everywhere. At the end of that day Justin and Emma have their first real kiss. It has been delayed long enough that it feels like a relief.

I thought Jimenez did the sibling stuff better than the dating plan stuff. The kids do not act like props. Alex tries to be cool about everything and then asks Justin quiet questions late at night. Sarah is rude to Emma because rudeness is safer than hoping an adult will stay. Chelsea follows Emma around and asks the same questions twice. Emma, who has always avoided anything permanent, finds herself memorizing their cereal preferences and bedtime quirks without deciding to.

Work keeps intruding. One date gets interrupted by a call that the kids have lice. Not glamorous. Emma just helps Justin wash scalps and comb nits and bag stuffed animals. Another day Amber brings Neil lunch at the hospital but nothing for Emma. Justin shows up with food for Emma and saves the shift. Small rescues like that stack up.

The physical part gets complicated because they want different things, or think they do. They make out after he drives her home. Emma asks if he is okay with keeping sex casual. Justin freezes. He tells her plainly that he knows he likes her more than she likes him. It is an uncomfortable scene, honest in a way romance novels sometimes skip. He does not want a fling. She says she does, because saying otherwise scares her.

Getting small and getting sick

Emma has a phrase for what she does under stress. She gets small. She retreats to a sort of internal island where she shuts everyone out. Only Maddy and, historically, Amber could reach her there. She explains it to Justin as a warning and an apology at once. When Amber has a public meltdown, throwing something at Neil's car while Neil tries to calm her, Emma pulls back from Justin and says over the phone that this is still casual for her. They barely talk for days.

Then Maddy leaves town to visit her parents and Emma gets norovirus alone on the island cottage. This section is gross and unromantic in a good way. Fever, vomiting, no car, no neighbors close enough to hear. Justin comes out and takes care of her all week. He gets sick himself. He cleans, makes bland food, sits with her while she sleeps. Afterward Emma lets him a little farther onto that internal island, to use her image. They sleep together. She admits she is falling for him and for the life forming around him. She also admits permanence terrifies her.

Maddy helps by agreeing to extend their Minneapolis assignment another six weeks. That extension gives Emma time to live inside Justin's household rather than visit it. She starts staying at his place. She helps with school routines, meals, laundry, Chelsea's bedtime. She likes it more than she expected, which frightens her more than the chaos did. Justin asks her to stay past the contract. She cries and says something feels broken in her. She likes him more than anyone and that is exactly the problem.

Around here the original curse joke mostly disappears. Nobody talks much about four dates anymore. The story becomes about whether two people with unstable parents can build a stable house for kids who did not ask for any of this.

The birthday, the DNA test, and Daniel

Maddy has been pushing Emma to take a DNA test for weeks. Emma resists because Amber always said they had no family. No grandparents, no cousins, nobody. On Emma's birthday, after breakfast with Justin's family and a lunch out with Maddy, they finally open the results together. Emma has close relatives. A half brother named Daniel Grant. Aunts and cousins on Amber's side.

Daniel messages back quickly. He lives about two hours away in Wakan, Minnesota, with his wife Alexis. They invite Emma and Maddy and Justin out. The house is warm and full of photos. Emma looks through albums and finds a picture from the Fourth of July when she was eight. That was the summer Amber left her alone, the summer that led to foster care. In the photo Amber is in Wakan, drinking and celebrating, while Emma was home scared and hungry. Emma has a panic attack in their living room. Daniel and Alexis are kind about it, but kindness almost makes it worse. She sees the childhood she could have had playing out in someone else's living room.

She drives back to Minneapolis and confronts Amber. I expected a big tearful scene. What Jimenez gives instead is flatter and crueler. Amber is not sorry in any usable way. She says her parents would have kept Emma but she wanted to keep her. Emma says she should have loved her enough to let her go. Then she leaves knowing she will not see her mother again.

What follows is fast and ugly. Amber, rejected by Neil after stealing from him and trashing his place and breaking an award he cared about, spirals further. Neil had offered to pay for treatment. Amber refused. Neil ends it. Amber damages his house badly and a fire breaks out before she flees town. Emma watches the one person she kept trying to save burn her last bridge, literally, and something in Emma shuts down completely.

She runs. She books an airport hotel without telling Maddy or Justin. She plans to leave Minnesota and go back to moving every six weeks forever. Maddy finds her because Maddy had slipped AirTags into her luggage, which sounds invasive until you remember who they are to each other. Maddy brings her a sandwich and talks to her straight. You are not what happened to you, you are what you choose next. Paraphrasing, but that is the shape of it. Face this or you will keep running from Amber for the rest of your life.

The next morning Emma goes to Justin and ends it. Not because she does not love him. She tells him she loves him even as she leaves. She says she is not well enough to be around kids. She does not want to become the Amber in their lives. She says he cannot fix twenty nine years of conditioning by loving her harder. Justin is gutted but he hears her. He does not chase her to the parking lot with a speech.

Six months in Wakan

Emma and Maddy take contracts in Wakan near Daniel and Alexis. Emma starts therapy and stays with it. She is diagnosed with complex PTSD, which fits the flashbacks, the shutdowns, the urge to flee when people get close. Therapy does not cure her in a montage. Jimenez shows it as slow work. Learning to notice when she starts going small. Learning to stay in a room during conflict. Learning to let Daniel's family be consistent without waiting for the catch.

Living near the Grants helps more than any single breakthrough. Sunday dinners. Nieces or nephews running around, depending on the day. Alexis checking in without prying. Daniel answering questions about Amber honestly, even when the answers hurt. Emma learns her grandparents were alive for much of her childhood. Amber had lied. That lie lands harder than almost anything else because it rewrites Emma's whole story about being unwanted by everyone. She was wanted. She was hidden.

Justin, meanwhile, stays in Minneapolis raising his siblings. They do not pause their lives for Emma. Alex gets taller and more responsible. Sarah softens a little, then backslides, then softens again. Chelsea still asks for Emma sometimes, which Justin answers honestly without poisoning the memory. He does not date. That is not framed as noble waiting so much as exhaustion and clarity. He knows who he wants.

After about six months Emma feels ready enough to visit. Not healed, not fixed, just ready to try without running. She goes to Justin's house and tells him she loves him properly, out loud, without adding an exit plan. She says she will stay if he will have her. He asks her to stay for good. His family celebrates in the loud, crowded kitchen way that used to overwhelm her. This time she stays at the table.

The epilogue jumps about two years ahead. Justin proposes using a message on the Toilet King billboard across from his old studio. It is silly and specific to them, a callback to where he lived when they met. Emma says yes. There is no wedding scene. The point is the choice, not the event.

What hit and what sagged

The best parts for me were the caregiving scenes. Lice combs, norovirus buckets, school lunches, Chelsea's bedtime questions. Jimenez writes domestic labor as love without making it saintly. Justin is tired and short tempered sometimes. Emma is good with the kids and then needs an hour alone on the porch. That balance felt closer to real parenting than most romances bother with. Maddy also steals every scene she is in. Fierce, funny, the kind of friend who tracks your luggage when you bolt and then hands you food before a lecture.

My complaints are about pileup. Once Amber moves in with Neil, the crises come so fast that the middle blurs. Lice, then a meltdown, then illness, then theft, then DNA shock, then fire, then flight. Any three of those could carry a novel. All of them together leave Justin and Emma with very little quiet time to just enjoy each other, which Josh? Actually which Kirkus also noted when it called the book more family drama than romance. I did not mind the heavy turn, but I wanted one more calm date in the second half to remember why these two like each other beyond trauma bonding.

Amber sometimes reads more like a plot device than a person. Her illness is named in places and hinted at in others, but her worst acts arrive right when Emma starts feeling safe, which feels timed for effect. And the curse premise that opens the book never really pays off. It gets them talking, then it vanishes. Readers who came for a light fake dating romp may feel misled by the first eighty pages.

Still, the structure works if you accept what the book is. A summer fling that turns into a story about learned avoidance and how to unlearn it. Emma does not get better because Justin loves her. She gets better because she lives near her brother, keeps her therapy appointments, and stops cleaning up after her mother. Justin does not save her. He holds the house steady while she does the work elsewhere, then lets her back in. That division felt respectful.

If you like contemporary romance that stays in Minnesota, mixes humor with foster care and guardianship and hospital shift talk, and ends happy but not cheap, this delivers. Just know the first third is banter and lake houses and the last third is panic attacks and boundaries and a six month separation. I finished it in two sittings, cried once during the photo album scene, and immediately texted my sister about our own family photos. For a book that starts with a dog named Brad, that is a pretty strong turn.

A note on the series

You do not need the first two books to follow this. Alexis and Daniel Grant are new to this story, though readers of the earlier books will recognize a few Minneapolis faces popping in briefly at gatherings. The throughline across the series is less plot and more place. Same city, same hospitals and bars, different couple learning how to stay. Jimenez keeps the connections light enough that newcomers will not feel lost.

If you start here and like the tone, going back to Part of Your World and Yours Truly makes sense. They share the mix of jokes and grief, and they explain some background friendships. But Just for the Summer stands alone as Emma and Justin's summer, fall, and two years later. The Toilet King billboard alone is worth the trip.

FAQ

When was Just for the Summer published?

Forever published it on April 2, 2024. The standard paperback runs 432 pages with ISBN 9781538704431.

Is Just for the Summer part of a series?

Yes. It is book 3 in the Part of Your World series, after Part of Your World and Yours Truly. Each couple stands alone.

Who are the main characters?

Emma, a traveling nurse with three young siblings in her care, and Justin, who posts about a dating curse on Reddit. They meet through direct messages and a cottage summer.