The Summer of Jodi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles) is a body-positive f/f contemporary romance/rom-com set in L.A. This book is a light, fast read with plenty of humor, and with an angst level that is appropriate but never too heavy or whiny.

The story is narrated by Abby Ives, who is seventeen. Abby is gay, which is an issue for absolutely no one except her mother, who seems to hope Abby will “grow out of it.” Abby, whose best friend Maliah just got a boyfriend, is convinced that she will never find a girlfriend. Abby is “the best friend”:

The thread binding rom-coms together? It’s the sassy best friend. The sassy best friend gets to have witty one-liners, a killer wardrobe, and usually a pretty great job. But it is the best friend’s goal to help our heroine fall in love; it is not the best friend’s job to fall in love herself.

Other than her lack of a love life, Abby’s summer looks encouraging as she is about to embark on an internship position with Lemonberry, a clothing boutique. Lemonberry specializes in the kinds of clothes that Abby likes – lots of color and fun patterns. She’s surprised to learn that there’s another intern, Jordi, and that only one of them will be able to continue working for the store in a paid position in the fall.

Abby, who misses spending time with Maliah, is also surprised to be approached by Jax. Jax is Maliah’s boyfriend’s best friend, and he’s in the same position as Abby with regard to missing his bestie, so he asks her to help him rate different hamburgers in L.A. as part of data research for his Dad, who is developing an app. Abby does not expect to be attracted to Jordi (she’s a photographer who wears all black) nor does she expect to form a friendship with Jax (he hangs out with the jock crowd). However, she does both.

The single biggest joy of this book for me is that no one cares that Abby is gay except insofar as it complicates her dating life. Jax and Abby are adorable as unlikely friends, but he’s clear from the outset that she likes girls so there’s never any romantic tension between them.

The second biggest joy is that no one (except, more on this later, Abby’s mother) has any problem with her being fat (Abby’s word, which, as she tries to explain to her mom, is “not an insult, just a thing”). Her friends see her as the fashionable one in the group and they turn to her for advice. The only aspect of her size that bothers them is that while she promotes body and size positivity on her blog and to everyone else, she struggles to extend that same acceptance to herself:

Honestly, I don’t think there’s something wrong with how I look. And when I do sometimes hate what I see in the mirror, it’s never my body. Well, not the size of my body, at least. I worry my nose is weirdly pointy, and I hate how my hair looks without dye, and I find it disturbing that sometimes in photos my posture is just like Mom’s.

I worry about how other people see me, though.

I’ve complained recently about over use of first-person present-tense narration in YA. In this book, I didn’t even notice it. It worked here for two reasons. One is that Abby has a funny, engaging voice. The other is that Abby is so very, very much living in the now. It probably helps that the book is short. It captures a quick moment in time while it’s happening. The style of narration felt natural to the story and that made all the difference for me.

The major conflict between Abby and Jordi, once they get past mutual awkwardness, is that despite preaching body positivity, Abby hates for people to see pictures of her. She refuses to use them on her blog and even though she doesn’t mind Jordi taking pictures of her, she doesn’t want Jordi to show them to anyone. Through Jordi’s photography, she learns to see how other people see her – vibrant, fashionable, colorful, and fun.

The only person who does not accept Abby’s size is Abby’s mom, Norah. Norah has a business called “Eat Healthy With Nora!” and she refers to meals as “solutions.” Norah has a tendency to say appalling things with the best intentions. The fact that she says these things in an effort to be a good parent makes them even worse. This conflict doesn’t feel resolved at all, despite a brief moment of connection between mother and daughter.

Even though I wanted more resolution with regard to Norah, I felt like the scenes with her character, and the brief scenes with Jordi’s parents, and the scenes with Abby’s boss, help establish a layered and real world in which adults are actual people. It goes well with Abby’s gradual realization that the many social groups of high school are composed of actual people, and that these groups can shift and mingle and coexist and sometimes reform themselves into whole new groups.

Because this is narrated by Abby and is more of a rom-com than a pure romance, we don’t get to know Jordi very well. However, she really comes to life when she talks about why she likes photography. I also liked the scene in which she picks Abby up for a date and reassures Abby’s father that Jordi has borrowed her father’s Prius and just had the oil changed. It was such a sweet and traditional scene marred only by Norah trying and catastrophically failing to be polite in the background (“Oh, she’s actually pretty!”). Jesus, Norah.

I’m giving this book a B+ because I felt that I didn’t get much insight into Jordi, and I wanted more resolution between Abby and her mother. However, on the whole, I liked this book a lot. It increased my appreciation for fashion, or at least helped me understand why other people find fashion enjoyable and interesting. I loved that the book was ethnically diverse and LGBT friendly and body positive. I enjoyed the role that food plays in the story in developing character and plot, from the burgers that Abby and Jax eat, to Jordi’s father’s Mexican cooking, to Norah’s “solutions,” to Abby switching from frappuccinos to coffee on her first day of work because coffees seem more grown-up to her.

As much as I love a happy ever after, I was satisfied with Abby and Jordi as a “happy for now” couple. I liked the fact that Jordi and Abby aren’t expected to know exactly what they want to do yet, and that they might stay together forever but there isn’t any pressure on them to do that. They are mature, responsible, capable, and talented, but they are still allowed to be teenagers. It’s not about the rest of their life. It’s about that one summer.