Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character.

But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. With actively frustrating characters, the narrative never gathers any steam. The result is an overly anxious protagonist pining over an overly affected goofus. Andreen also returns Indian and White British Arthur to his baseline characterization: smug, erudite, and annoying. The supporting cast is lacking in dimensionality, perhaps because the lead comes across as not being terribly interested in getting to know others as real people.

Mixing in the boarding school kids with the already large cast of characters risks scuttling the book, but White junior Finley returns to her self-absorbed status quo. Finley’s confused and annoyed: Are they a couple, or was it all just a holiday fling? In addition to Finley’s romantic woes, she has to navigate her prep school’s snotty rich-kid cliques, an element touched lightly upon in the previous book but brought to the forefront here. Over winter break in Finley’s small Oklahoma hometown of Christmas, the pair started smoochin’ and snugglin’, but now that they’re back at their boarding school in Connecticut, Arthur is giving Finley the cold shoulder.

Teen lovebirds return for another go ’round after So, This Is Christmas (2021).įinley Brown and Arthur Chakrabarti Watercress are back from the holidays.

Tracy andreen books