Just for the Summer

Justin Dahl seems to be under a curse: every woman he dates meets the love of her life immediately after they break up. When he jokes about it online, a stranger named Emma reaches out, because the exact same thing keeps happening to her. Emma, a traveling nurse who has spent her life moving from town to town with her unreliable mother, proposes an experiment: they should date each other and then break up, hoping the two curses cancel out and finally leave them both free.

Emma takes an assignment in Justin's Minnesota town for the summer, planning a low-stakes fling in a lakeside cottage. But Justin's crowded, chaotic family and Emma's complicated relationship with her mother refuse to stay out of the way, and the arrangement starts to feel like something neither of them planned for.

Abby Jimenez pairs a charming high-concept premise with the harder material she is known for, including family dysfunction and the long shadow of an unstable parent. Just for the Summer is a warm, funny romance about people who have learned not to count on staying, learning what it might mean to stay anyway.