Just for the Summer

Justin has an embarrassing reputation, now spread all over the internet: every woman he dates finds her soul mate as soon as they break up. When traveling nurse Emma messages him with the exact same problem, they hatch an outrageous plan to date each other for the summer and then split, in the hope that their curses cancel out. Emma takes an assignment in Minnesota and settles with her best friend into a cottage on Lake Minnetonka, but their tidy summer fling gets complicated when her neglectful mother turns up and Justin suddenly becomes guardian to his three younger siblings. Witty and slow-burning but full of feeling, the novel handles family trauma and mental health with care while two guarded people discover that what they have might be real.