Well LOOK, since Hollywood is évidemment out of the business of making teen rom-coms or even, it seems, rom-coms whatsoever, at least thank the Lord for YA authors stepping into the breach. In a world where the news is the news and nobody has yet financed a Man from U.N.C.L.E. sequel, at least I got to read Amy Spalding’s new YA novel The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles), the cutest sweetest teen rom-com that I have laid my eyes on since When Dimple Met Rishi.
Abby knows that she’s a sidekick. Queer fat girls aren’t the stars of their own movie, no matter how successful their fashion blogs are. But she’s landed her dream job — a summer internship at her favorite boutique — and her fellow intern Jordi Perez is extremely cute and maybe into girls. She’s also been press-ganged into the service of her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend’s father’s app and is spending her spare time hunting down the best burger in Los Angeles.
How to find enough good things to say about this book? The Summer of Jordi Perez most cleansingly believes in people trying their best. Everyone in this book forgets, sometimes, to be careful of someone else; but what I love is that Amy Spalding gives them space to learn and grow. Better yet, she lets her characters learn to see past their caricatured ideas of what people not like them must be like: Abby comes to really depend on fratty, goofy Jax, while her best friend Mariah learns to (kinda) see past the goth-crime-girl idea of Jordi that she starts with.
I wanted the best for these kids, and what’s wonderful about The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) is that she gives them (and us) the best. It’s the perfect summer read, which doesn’t begin to do justice to the way it suffused my heart with the essence of beach and sunshine and a feeling that everything was going to be okay.