I adored this book. It captures a specific sense of lethargic infatuation, alongside the modern day trappings of the internet, and the ‘familiar un-familiarity’ of celebrity. Elsa, our main character, is working through the emotional aftermath of being in a failed ‘throuple’. She’s living back at home with her parents, searching for a job, and feeling quite ambivalent towards most things. However, her small town happens to host a prestigious summer festival program, and a quite well known actor is now going to be spending the season there. Elsa finds herself drawn to him, and his group, manufacturing ways to meet, and feeling a deep sense of longing to be known by these people, a sudden fixation which helps draw her away from the lingering pain of her previous relationship, her focus now fully turned to them. The book is full heady, meandering, yearning, and I just found it all to be so intoxicating. This lust is almost at a juxtaposition with the actuality of Elsa’s day to day life, working and scrolling, which barely changes even when she starts to make her way into the group. She’s also juggling the question of her sexuality, which becomes more prominent as the book progresses, and the people she finds herself drawn to palpably begins to shift. I love the way the author described the celebrity, and how we come to feel like we know these people, without ever truly knowing them. Never giving the actor-character a name was a very smart move, I felt. I think this is the perfect book to read on a hot summers day, for people who like quiet, introspective (yet not boring) novels, that still bring a little heat. This is a book that dwells beautifully in its small town setting, in its flash of a summer, so equally full of apathy, longing, and that tint of modern day, internet-led, obsession. Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review.