Title: The Matchbreaker Summer
Author: Annie Rains
Publisher: Underlined
Publication date: April 5th, 2022
304 pages
3/5 stars
Goodreads Synopsis
A pitch-perfect summer camp rom-com about two teens with nothing in common who come together to help break up a romance and unexpectedly start one of their own
Sixteen-year-old Paisley Manning has been attending Camp Seabrook since she was a little girl, when her parents ran it together. For the last few years, since her father’s death, she’s been the one helping her mom run the camp behind the scenes. This year, however, will be Camp Seabrook’s last hurrah because Paisley’s mom has met a guy online and they’re getting married.
Enter Hayden Bennett, who is working alongside Paisley. Paisley and Hayden are like oil and water. She follows the rules, and he seems to live to break them all. But when Hayden catches wind of Paisley’s predicament, he has an idea. If a matchmaker in some computer algorithm caused the issue, a couple of real-life matchbreakers can fix it.
As they work to break up the happy couple, Paisley discovers that maybe Hayden’s not so bad after all. Has she met her own perfect match in her fellow matchbreaker?
Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror paperback original titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to read the way you want to read it.
Review
I have a soft spot for books set at a summer camp, especially YA contemporary with a splash of romance. Add in opposites attract and a plot to break up a relationship and I knew this was a book I wanted to read. And it was okay. I think a different ending or longer ending would’ve increased my enjoyment of this book enormously. It felt unfinished without an epilogue or a flash forward scene at the end to see where the characters are.
This is definitely a younger YA book. The characters are 15-16 and more immature, exactly what you would expect from the age range. I don’t say this as a negative, it isn’t. I just think it’s an important distinction as there are a lot of books with 17-18 year old characters that are much more mature. What you see if what you get with this one. I loved the summer camp setting, the emotionality of the characters with their backgrounds and the loss they experienced. Paisley is dealing with her mom moving on with another man after her father dies and wants to move and sell the summer camp that was the lifeblood of the family. Hayden is dealing with his brother’s death and probably some sort of ADHD symptoms that weren’t being managed well.
Again, I go back to needing more from the ending. I would’ve rated this higher if the ending was more explanatory, it just felt like it ended prematurely for the story line.
Thank you to Underlined and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Happy reading, folks!
Baltimore Bibliophile 