CHECKING YOU OUT

Two Los Angeles high school seniors find a connection through books.

Lizzie is content to hang out with a lychee boba tea, her three Book Besties, and a pile of books. While she’s rereading Feline Forest: Zephyr’s Quest, her favorite book since sixth grade, a library checkout receipt from the previous borrower falls out—it turns out they’d borrowed volumes from Lizzie’s top three fantasy series. At her friends’ insistence, Lizzie leaves a note for her reading soul mate in another book she wants to read, with instructions to leave a response “in the fantasy novel you’d take with you to a desert island,” and so sparks a summerlong scavenger hunt. Lizzie doesn’t suspect that her mystery correspondent might be “fun jock” Dylan, the cute boy who volunteers with her in the Best Friends Animal Society’s kitten nursery. Although she can’t deny she’s attracted to him, Dylan’s admission that he has “zero opinions on books” is a dealbreaker. In truth, Dylan is a huge fantasy reader—but bullying has led him to hide this fact. He’s lying low until he leaves for New York University in the fall. Will the duo ever learn who their Fellow Fantasy Reader is? Told in the Taiwanese American teens’ alternating points of view interspersed with text messages, this light rom-com champions reading—and being true to yourself. Both leads’ voices feel younger than their ages. Dylan’s growth is satisfying, but Lizzie’s arc is less well developed.

A breezy bookish love story.