Breakaway Books

Authored by Alex Aster; Published March 2025; Romance

⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

Summer in the City contains within its pages just about every trope I have ever read in a romantic comedy. I admit, I like a good trope. Executed well, they feel like a cozy and well-worn blanket. This novel, though, makes me want to give up on rom coms for good.

In Summer in the City, Elle is hired to write a screenplay featuring famous locations in New York. After a mortifying and infuriating experience with a tech CEO at a nightclub two years prior, she had sworn off the city, but Elle reluctantly resigns herself to spend the summer finding inspiration in Central Park, the High Line, and other notable sites. To her horror, she finds herself living right next door to the very same tech CEO, Parker, and when it becomes clear how much his money does not impress her, he proposes that she pose as his girlfriend for the summer to create positive publicity before the acquisition of his company. You will not be surprised to find that the two fall in love while fake dating and experiencing all that New York has to offer.

This novel was tough for me to get through. At times, it felt like the author was wildly inconsistent, changing the personality of the characters and the plot to fit whatever cute scene she wanted to craft next. One second, Elle can barely jog a block before collapsing because of how out of shape she is, and the next, she handily beats a bunch of grown men in basketball. She’s completely introverted, hanging on to her best friend Penelope for dear life since college, but immediately becomes extremely close to Parker’s friends’ girlfriends after just one dinner. The portrayal of Elle drove me more than a little crazy, because it seems like the author wanted to make her a sedentary homebody but didn’t quite understand what that actually meant about her daily life. When it comes to her and Parker’s relationship, I was agog at how poorly they communicate. Elle is infuriated by Parker’s attempts to buy her affections and has a huge meltdown about how he doesn’t understand what she wants and needs, but do we ever see her communicate that to him? No, of course not. I know that rom coms can reach fairy tale levels of fantasy, but these traits makes Elle seem almost mean.

For his part, Parker does come off as over-the-top obsessive about Elle. He shuts down a whole street in Manhattan for her, flies her off to Europe in his private jet at the drop of a hat, and buys several pieces of jewelry from an expensive auction because he thinks he sees her smile at them. But none of this creeped me out–what did creep me out is how he purchases her dream townhouse and decorates it with her screenplays and pictures of them, and then maintains it even after Elle breaks up with him. Not for a week, or a month, but over a year. A guy carrying a flame for that long, with that level of intensity, rather than attempting to move on needs therapy. Maybe this behavior comes off as romantic to some people, but to me, it screams “I need help.” Perhaps this feeling is at the heart of why the romance is such a tough sell for me. It has all the textbook romantic scenes; in fact, I feel like I could have copy-pasted them from other romances. But, without a heartwarming relationship at the center, the tropes don’t come off as sweet so much as cringy.

(Note: I listened to this as an audiobook. The narrator also is not to my taste, but I don’t think it affected how much I like the plot itself? It’s surprisingly difficult to tell.)

Summer in the City may be the perfect romance for people who love New York, but otherwise? It’s just a little too much.