The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding is the Last YA Novel I Will Ever Like


“It is the best friend’s job to help our heroine fall in love; it is not the best friend’s job to fall in love herself…I’m pretty sure I’m not the heroine. I don’t even think I’m in my own story” (3)


Reading this book feels like closing the gate to an old garden and watching all the flowers die because you can’t get back in. It’s sweet, it’s sunny and you spent some good moments there but now that you’re older its just a bunch of dirt and dried-up plants.


Once upon a time I would have loved Amy Spalding’s Young Adult (YA) romance The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) but since I began my “campaign of reading” last summer I don’t think I would have picked it up willingly. I hadn’t read YA in almost a year. This book was chosen by vote for the book club of my local GSA, and while I didn’t like the last choice (Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote) I thought I ought to give my old favorite genre a second change.


I should be in the target demographic for this story, which is blurbed by Julie Murphy as “The queer, fat girl rom-com of my dreams!” Like Abby, Spalding’s fashion-blogger protagonist, I’m queer (albeit asexual, not gay) and I’ve been overweight or obese for most of my life. I love stories with LGBT+ characters in them. But this book felt like nothing.


“I wasn’t in love with clothes, but maybe I was in love with how clothes made me feel. I was designing how other people saw me, and that felt powerful” (15)


The Summer of Jordi Perez follows Abby as she gets an internship at the brand of her dreams but finds herself competing with—and falling for—her cointern. The plot is limp. Abby is nice. Jordi Perez, the stylish photographer love interest, is nice. Their friends are nice. Everyone lives in the sequestered LA of pool parties and burger joints, where a teenage photographer can get a place at a distinguished gallery and two rivals can split a competitive internship. The charm of the book is like cotton candy: I can read it in two hours, but it won’t stay with me.


I can’t think of a single thing Spalding does “wrong” other than write a story that isn’t for me. If you like queer YA or love stories or Los Angeles, you might enjoy The Summer of Jordi Perez.


But I think it’s time for me to lock the gate now.

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