Kristina Forest

The point of when you get off the boardwalk to walk to the actual shore, oh my gosh, that always feels like the longest walk in the world, especially if the sand is hot and you're just trying to run and get to the wet sand as fast as you can because your feet are burning.

These were just very...

clear memories in my mind.

And I wanted to put that onto the page so that when people read The Summer Girlfriend, they would feel like, oh, this is what it means to be at the beach in New Jersey for the summer.

Yeah.

So that, and the smell, the smell, the smell of the salt water, it's just like everywhere in the seagulls, like calling to each other and also bothering you.

Like the minute they smell food, they are right in front of you.

So I was just trying to capture all of those memories when I was, when I was drafting.

Yeah, no.

Yeah, we're lucky.

So The Summer Girlfriend is about a woman named Noelle who is saving up to go back to college.

She had to drop out when she was originally in college, when she was a teenager.

And she wants to get her master's degree and become a librarian.

But she's just been let go of her main job as a bookseller.

She also has a side hustle as a bridesmaid for hire.

And she happens to meet a young man named Jeremiah, who is wealthy.

He's the heir to a baked goods company.

And he is in need of a fake girlfriend for the summer at his family's beach house in the town called Heart Beach.

And so they decide to fake date for the summer.

He'll pay her to be his pretend girlfriend, and then she'll get the money for college.