Summer Official

by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Opposites attract in this contemporary, sweet, sapphic romance about two girls who reluctantly come together for a summer challenge.

Heaven and Saylor could not be more different. Saylor is bubbly, popular, athletic, and always partnered up. Heaven is grumpy and artistic, prefers her skateboard to people, and has never dated anyone. So no one would believe they’d agree to spend the entire summer together.

Yet, that’s exactly what happened. When Saylor Ford breaks her arm at Basketball camp, distracted by her mom’s internet fame discussing Saylor’s newfound sexuality, she becomes determined not to spend the summer stuck at home with the woman. Her one saving grace is a girl she’s pretty sure can’t stand her but that she finds absolutely irresistible. Heaven Goo-Campbell. Thankfully, Heaven is willing to let Saylor in on her Summer Bingo challenge, but for a price. Saylor has to help Heaven establish a social media page showcasing her art for her future career as a tattoo artist.

They didn’t plan on the intimacy of spending each day together and the deepening feelings that followed. Soon, they become something more than a shared project. But can the girls even have a future together when Saylor is wary of bringing their relationship out into the light—too afraid that her mom’s status as a popular influencer will give Saylor and timid Heaven more attention than they can handle?

Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Lesbian, Contemporary, LGBT, Queer

288 pages, Paperback

Expected publication April 14, 2026

About the author

After years of meddling in her friends’ love lives, Rebekah Weatherspoon turned to writing romance to get her fix. Raised in Southern New Hampshire, Rebekah Weatherspoon now lives in Southern California where she will remain forever because she hates moving.

Her BDSM romance At Her Feet won the Golden Crown Literary Award for erotic lesbian fiction. Her novella FIT (#1 in the FIT Trilogy) won the Romantic Times Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Erotica Novella, SATED (#3 in the FIT Trilogy) was nominated for the the Romantic Times Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Digital Erotic Romance and most recently SOUL TO KEEP VSS#3 won the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Erotica.

Her 2018 romantic comedy RAFE: A Buff Male Nanny received praise from both Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times. You can look for her most recent romantic comedy XENI : A Marriage of Inconvenience now, and a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, A COWBOY TO REMEMBER, late February 2020 from Kensington Books. In the meant time, you can find Rebekah and her books on twitter at @rdotspoon and her website www.rebekahweatherspoon.com,

Reviews

[tiana ♡]

pre-read notes:
ARC secured! Look at this adorable cover 🥹 I’m really excited to check this out 💕

[Jess Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as an ARC from NetGalley, to be published April 2026

3.5 Star rounded up

If I was younger this would have been a 5 star 100%

I found this book really refreshing, lately I have been reading a lot of books and finding that the internal thoughts of the characters aren’t matching the age they are supposed to be. With Summer Official I felt like I was really in the 17 year old mindset throughout both Heaven and Saylor’s chapters. It was a great insight into the minds of LGBTQIA teens who are trying to navigate the reality of a first queer relationship in the society we live in currently.

I think the contrasts of the families and the contrast of outside pressures on the two girls was dealt with beautifully and showed the complexities of coming out as well as the complexities of your first love in such great detail that I felt like I was back in that headspace again.

I think this is a wonderful book for YA teens and I highly recommend it to anyone around that age wondering how to deal with their inner emotions.

So grateful to have received this early

[Justine]

OH MY GOD NEW REBEKAH WEATHERSPOON AND ITS A SAPPHIC ROMANCE!?!?!?!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved everything Rebekah Weatherspoon has written and her YA books are no exception. I love that her characters are layered and the reader is learning about each person along with the love interest in the book. This story had a really fun plot- unlike anything I have seen done before. I loved the friendships and family dynamics. I rarely read YA romance, but this series is an exception. I cannot recommend this book enough. It was the perfect way to unwind and relax. I couldn’t put it down.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Lisa Marie Tedesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cute little read! It was great to end the summer with. I enjoyed it very much. It’s nice to find something pretty low stakes and queer these days!

[Delaney (flairforfiction) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t really know what I expected from this book, aside from it being a cute YA f/f contemporary.

It started off really well, with the two characters seriously crushing on each other and thinking it was unrequited. But then it just kind of kept doing that over and over again? I felt like half the book was just the two characters talking about how much they liked each other but not expressing their feelings to one another. And then once they did express their feelings, nothing really happened. The two of them just kind of kept it secret but still went about doing their bingo challenge. There was no real tension or plot imo other than the fact that Saylor’s mom kept bothering them with content creation, but even that wasn’t really handled well to me. It was talked about endlessly, but nothing was really done about it for the majority of the novel. And even when something was done about it, it was handled in like five seconds, so the culmination of it felt so rushed. I just didn’t feel any sense of relief from all that we had to hear about it and wish we could have had more of a resolution or something more from how her mom handled being told she was kind of being too much with her content creation. Even Saylor’s reaction just seemed like a nothing reaction. And the ending even felt kind of abrupt. I didn’t even realize the book was over until I turned the page and was at the acknowledgments. I wish we could have had just something MORE.

Overall, I just felt like this book just sort of went around in circles. It just kept repeating the same things endlessly and I didn’t feel like it really had any plot to follow. It was nice that the girls didn’t really have any big problems between them, as opposed to a big fight or a third act breakup or something, but there didn’t seem to be any storyline because of that. I wish there had been more plot, aside from the bingo challenge, because I was honestly kind of bored with everything. The book itself wasn’t bad, but it just felt just okay. I don’t really feel like I can recommend it though.

[tasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you Penguin Random House for my physical ARC!

Summer Official surrounds Saylor & Heaven through their bingo-filled summer filled with love, friendship and family drama. Saylor breaks her arm and is stuck at home with her mother who is a mega influencer all summer. Saylor has an existing crush on Heaven and is hoping to spend more time with her. Heaven is looking forward to a chill summer where she partakes in her dads bingo game while also growing her tattoo porfolio. Saylor manages to convince Heaven to hang out with her all summer; Saylor will help Heaven complete bingo while also growing her tattoo social media account in exchange for Heaven getting Saylor away from her influencer mother and her millions of follwers. The girls knock out the bingo challenges one by one, while inevitably falling in love with each other. Heaven's upcoming career and passion as a tattoo artist begins to flourish with Saylors help. Saylor gains the courage to confront her mom about no longer wanting to be in her online content anymore. All while they learn to manage their first real wlw relationship.

I think this can be appealing to a young audience who is trying to find themselves or is newly discovering their LGBTQ+ identity. It is a very short and fun romance tailored to a younger audience. It introduces early ways to embark in a relationship with someone of the same sex & how to navigate telling your family while also juggling self love and discovery.

It was a short easy read and I am sure I would've liked something like this when I was younger. I appreciate the representation for the LGBTQ+ community :) Especially for a younger audience this is targetted for which may need help from books like this, to introduce wlw relationships and navigating these things with families

[Ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It has perfect summer vibes. I really appreciated how Heaven was supported by her friends, family, and community. She was given the space grow and be independent while absolutely feeling comfortable telling her parents when things got to be too much. Saylor is great and has a deeply nuanced relationship with her mother. There are hints of the power imbalance and loss of agency that come with having a white influencer mother. I like that the story points this out and has the space for multiple possible futures with Saylor’s relationship with her mother.

All of this was a backdrop to the perfect summer romance—Saylor has had a crush on Heaven for forever. They are connected by their friend group but haven’t really spent time together. That all changes after Saylor breaks her arm at basketball camp and is over spending the summer as a content creator with her mother. She kind of sort of blackmails Heaven into hanging out with her for the summer. They support each other and help each other grow. All of this is done with so much care, even when they mess up.

I received an ARC from NetGalley

[Kelsie ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to G.P. Putman’s Sons Books for Young Readers for letting me read and review this book early. All thoughts are my own!!

This book is the perfect summer read for preteens and early teenagers!! It’s a fun summer adventure story with heavier themes that added so much to this story! Watching the our two main characters bounce around their feelings for each other was so sweet and endearing that you can’t help but root for them.

I really enjoyed the dynamic of the influencer mom and how it affected the kids involved. It’s a lighter version of this dynamic cause it’s a YA book, but I liked seeing how it was written in this story. The family dynamics in this book were so interesting, and I loved seeing how they were similar and how they contrasted.

It’s a shorter book, so the pacing is quicker, but it was honestly such an unequivocally YA book that I didn’t mind. Being in the heads of our two main characters really brought me back to when I was a teenager. I think it would be really fun to revisit these characters a few years later as adults.

Would definitely recommend for younger readers looking for a quick and sweet read!

[Papillon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this novel. All my thoughts and opinions are my own.

Real rating: 3.5

Yup, that was a YA novel, alright. It was cute and decent for what it was. There wasn’t really anything extraordinary about the book, to be honest. The last two chapters from the POV of Heaven’s friends felt a bit unnecessary to me. I would’ve been interested in it if they actually had any personality throughout the course of the story, but they didn’t. I understood the point of it, but it just didn’t land for me personally. Then there was some things in the way the author would describe Saylor’s physical appearance in particular that felt very odd to me. I’m also just noticing that the author also wrote Rafe, which—actually explains a lot. No, I will not be further explaining.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad book. It was just okay.

[Luv2TrvlLuvBks · Rating 2 out of 5]

This opposites attract/situation created novel just didn't resonate with this reader. And, this is despite having enjoyed "Her Good Side".
Just couldn't engage with the writing, characters or storyline. Even with toxic elements introduced to create friction between one of the FMC and her mother, found it to be just ok.

#SummerOfficial #NetGalley

This ARC was provided by the publisher, Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Remi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars

Summer Official is an easy and quick read that will be a great summery read, but I do wish that some plot points weren't so quickly brushed over such as with Saylor's influencer mum. Who caused a lot of stress for Saylor but the resolution was so rushed and then the ending was very abrupt and I honestly thought there would be at least one more chapter left. Overall I just wish that the book was a bit longer so the conflicts didn't feel so quickly brushed over but I would still recommend it if you want an easy quick lighthearted book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-arc of this book. All opinions shall be my own.

The setup for Summer Official was fun, with Saylor and Heaven doing the Summer Bingo and slowly realising they had feelings for each other.
The first half had me hooked, but the second half fell a bit flat for me. I liked that there was no third act breakup, but there was not much conflict in this book, which I expected especially with Saylor's influencer Mum.

Overall, an easy summery read.

[tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that this was a super cute, cozy, low stakes, read. Heaven and Saylor were absolutely adorable and this was such an easy read. I thoroughly enjoyed this, I just wish the ending wasn’t so abrupt.