The Summer Girlfriend by Kristina Forest Review - Fake-Dating Romance That Feels Completely Real
- Joao Nsita
- 1 hour ago
- 9 min read
Opening Hook
There's a reason fake-dating romance never goes out of style. It's not just because it's a delicious conceit — though it is. It's because at its core, the fake-dating trope is about one very real and very human thing: the terrifying intimacy of being seen. When you agree to pretend to be someone's partner, you don't just play a role. You pay attention. You learn the way they take their coffee, the things that make them laugh, the words they reach for when they're nervous. And paying that kind of attention to someone is, it turns out, one of the most dangerous things you can do.
Kristina Forest understands this completely. And in The Summer Girlfriend, her first novel in a new contemporary romance series for adults, she has written a fake-dating story that is charming and funny and warm and, underneath all of that, genuinely moving.
I came into this book with high expectations. I've been a Forest fan since her YA days, and the move to adult romance felt natural — she's always written love stories with the emotional maturity of someone who knows exactly what she's doing. But The Summer Girlfriend surprised me anyway. It's sunnier and more relaxed than I expected, with a lightness that never tips into fluffiness and a heart that is completely, irresistibly warm.
This is the book you take to the beach this summer. This is the book you read in one sitting on a Sunday afternoon when the windows are open and everything feels possible. This is the book you recommend to the friend who says they don't usually read romance, knowing full well that by the end of the first chapter, they'll be completely hooked.
What This Book Is About
Noelle is a graduate student with a plan. The plan is simple: finish her master's degree, pay her tuition, do not let anything derail her from the life she has carefully constructed after years of watching other people's derailments. The plan does not include losing her primary income source right before the fall semester starts. And it definitely does not include Jeremiah.
Jeremiah is an heir to a confection empire — the kind of easy, comfortable, effortlessly charming man who has never had to think too hard about money and who wears his family's success with a breezy lack of self-consciousness that Noelle finds both magnetic and slightly annoying. He needs a fake girlfriend for a family weekend. His reasons are his own, initially presented as simple and temporary. He'll pay her well. It's just a weekend.
It is, of course, not just a weekend. What begins as a financial transaction between two strangers extends, by mutual somewhat-reluctant agreement, into an entire summer. Noelle needs the money. Jeremiah, it becomes clear, needs something else — something harder to name, something that has to do with being truly known by another person rather than simply surrounded by people who know of him.
What Forest does brilliantly is show us how the summer changes both of them. Noelle, who has learned to hold herself at a careful emotional distance, finds that Jeremiah keeps slipping past her defences — not through any grand romantic gesture, but through small, consistent acts of genuine attention and care. Jeremiah, for his part, finds in Noelle someone who sees him without the filter of his family name, someone who challenges him to think harder and be more than the pleasant, uncomplicated version of himself he's learned to perform. The romance between them builds beautifully, season by season, until the arrival of autumn and the question that has been hovering over every page: what happens when the contract ends?
Author's Style and Craft
Kristina Forest writes contemporary romance with a confidence and ease that makes it look deceptively simple. Her prose is clean and propulsive — she doesn't over-describe, she doesn't over-explain, and she trusts her characters completely. The result is a novel that reads quickly but doesn't feel slight, a story told with precision that has room inside it for real emotion.
Her strength has always been character. Forest writes people you would want to know in real life — specific, flawed, genuinely funny, occasionally infuriating. Noelle is particularly well-drawn: her practicality reads as self-protection rather than coldness, and the moments when that protection cracks open are genuinely moving. Jeremiah is written with more warmth than you might expect from the archetype of the charming, wealthy heir — he earns your affection early and keeps it throughout.
The family dynamics in this book are also worth noting. Both Noelle and Jeremiah's families show up in significant ways, and Forest handles these dynamics with nuance and care. Family in her fiction is never simple background; it's active, shaping, present. The confection empire Jeremiah comes from is rendered with affectionate specificity that makes it feel real.
Themes and Deeper Meaning
At its heart, The Summer Girlfriend is about what we owe ourselves. Noelle has spent years making decisions based on practicality and caution, and those decisions have kept her safe — but safe is not the same as fully alive. The summer with Jeremiah isn't just a romance. It's a reckoning with the question of whether she will allow herself to want something simply because she wants it, without first calculating the risk.
This theme — the tension between safety and desire, between the life you planned and the life that's possible — is one that Forest handles with rare honesty. She doesn't pretend the risks Noelle is taking are small. They aren't. She also doesn't pretend that love solves everything. It doesn't. What she does instead is show how choosing to be open, even in the face of uncertainty, is itself a form of courage.
The class dynamics between Noelle and Jeremiah are also handled with intelligence and care. Their different relationships to money and security create real friction between them, and Forest takes that friction seriously. Jeremiah's wealth is never treated as simply romantic; it's treated as a source of genuine tension that they have to navigate honestly. If you've been following our coverage of emotionally rich contemporary romance on That Love Podcast's monthly romance roundups, you know this is exactly the kind of book we champion: romance that is aware of the world it exists in, romance that earns its happy ending.
The fake-dating structure also allows Forest to explore authenticity — who we are when we're performing versus who we are when we're finally allowed to be real. The novel asks, quietly and persistently: is there a version of yourself you keep locked away? And what would happen if you let someone see it? These are questions worth sitting with, as we've explored in our 10 Must-Read Romance Books of June 2025 — a summer reading list built on exactly this kind of emotionally intelligent storytelling.
What This Book Gets Absolutely Right
The fake-dating mechanics feel organic and earned. Forest never lets you forget that the premise is a conceit, but she also makes you believe completely in its emotional logic. The way the fake relationship becomes real is gradual and inevitable and deeply satisfying.
Noelle is a fully realised protagonist. Her practicality is written with empathy rather than judgment. You understand why she is the way she is, and you root for her not just to get the guy but to get the life she deserves.
The humour is genuinely funny. There are several scenes — particularly involving Jeremiah's extended family — that are laugh-out-loud good. Forest has a gift for comic timing that elevates the novel considerably.
The romance respects both characters' autonomy. Neither Noelle nor Jeremiah pressures the other. The relationship develops through mutual choice, mutual vulnerability, and mutual respect. This sounds like a low bar, but you'd be surprised how rare it is done this well.
The ending is emotionally satisfying without being saccharine. Forest doesn't wrap everything up in a perfect bow. The resolution is happy but also honest — these are two people choosing each other knowing that there is work ahead, and that feels more romantic, not less.
Where the Book Could Have Gone Further
The confection empire setting is delightful but underutilised. The world of Jeremiah's family business is colourful and interesting, and there were moments I wanted the novel to spend more time in it. A bit more sensory world-building here could have added real flavour.
Some of the side characters feel functional rather than fully realised. Noelle's friends are present and supportive but somewhat interchangeable. More distinction between them would have enriched the novel's emotional ecosystem.
The central conflict in the third act feels slightly manufactured. The obstacle that arises before the resolution is real and emotionally grounded, but it arrives somewhat abruptly after a very smooth first two-thirds. A slightly more gradual build to the crisis might have increased its impact.
Books to Read If You Loved This One
The Hating Game by Sally Thorne – The gold standard of the enemies-to-something-more contemporary romance, with the same addictive banter energy and the same commitment to making you root desperately for two specific people to figure it out.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – For readers who want more of that slow-burn summer romance with genuine emotional stakes and a protagonist navigating the question of what she wants versus what she thinks she should want.
Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur – Another contemporary romance built around a fake relationship that becomes real, with wonderful characters and a warm, sunny emotional register similar to Forest's.
Who Should Read This Book
The Summer Girlfriend is for anyone who loves fake-dating romance, richly drawn characters, and contemporary love stories that take their emotional stakes seriously. It's for anyone who has ever chosen safety over desire and wondered what the alternative might have looked like. It's for summer readers who want something warm and absorbing that also has something real to say.
If you're new here, our romance book recommendations hub is a great place to discover everything we've reviewed and recommended — and The Summer Girlfriend would sit beautifully in any reading list on that page.
Content warnings: Financial stress, mild family pressure, brief references to past heartbreak.
How This Book Made Me Feel
Happy. Genuinely, simply, completely happy.
I know that sounds like faint praise, but I mean it as the highest compliment. Not every romance novel needs to crack you open or reorder your understanding of love. Some of them just need to make you feel good — to give you that particular warm glow of watching two people find their way to each other, of believing, for a few hundred pages, that love really is possible and worth the risk.
The Summer Girlfriend gave me that feeling from the first chapter and held onto it until the very last page. I read the final scene twice — once quickly, breathless, and once slowly, deliberately, savouring every word. That's how you know a book has done its job.
Final Verdict
The Summer Girlfriend is a joyful, warm, emotionally intelligent fake-dating romance that announces Kristina Forest as a major force in adult contemporary romance. It's fun without being lightweight, warm without being saccharine, and romantic in all the most meaningful ways.
This is your perfect summer read. Don't miss it.
👉 Pick up The Summer Girlfriend on Amazon and fall in love this season.
About the Author
Kristina Forest is the author of the YA novels I Wanna Be Where You Are and Now That I've Found You. The Summer Girlfriend marks her debut in adult contemporary romance. She writes with a warmth and character-focused clarity that has won her a devoted readership across both age categories.
Visit her official website at kristinaforest.com for more.
From the ThatLovePodcast Team
At That Love Podcast, we believe love stories — in books, on screen, and in real life — have the power to change us. If this review resonated with you, subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a new recommendation. And if you've already read The Summer Girlfriend, come find us on social media and tell us what you thought. We love talking books with you.
FAQs
1. Is The Summer Girlfriend part of a series? Yes — it's the first book in a new series by Kristina Forest. It works completely as a standalone, but there will be more stories set in this world.
2. How spicy is The Summer Girlfriend? It's on the sweeter side of contemporary romance — there is heat, but it's more emotional than explicit. Think warm and romantic rather than intensely steamy.
3. Do I need to have read Kristina Forest's YA books first? Not at all. The Summer Girlfriend is a completely standalone adult romance. No prior knowledge of her work is necessary.
4. What's the main trope in The Summer Girlfriend? Fake-dating is the central trope, with strong supporting threads of class difference and slow-burn emotional intimacy.
5. Where can I buy The Summer Girlfriend? Available on Amazon, through Thriftbooks, and at your local bookshop.
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