I got this book on Netgalley so thank you very much to Bloomsbury Publishing for granting me access to it. This book will be published in May 2026. I was given an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Okay so first of all I was really excited to read this book. I understand that it is the first book that Kai Spellmeier has written in English. Maybe that's why I just couldn't gel with it. My main issue with it is that I do not understand where it is set. It's set in a small town called Lombard which seems to be on an island... but where? I thought at first it was American, but no, Luca and Simo use a lot of British phrases. It's a cute seaside town, but I cannot get to grips with where in the world it's supposed to be located. It comes off to me like a Channel Island or something. I also felt like the town just wasn't rooted enough in reality. It wasn't described well enough. I found this issue was enough to stop me from loving the book.
However, it does have its high points. Luca lives with his dad, who owns a bakery slash cafe, where Luca sometimes works. Luca is gay and so is his dad. Luca's mum is off doing some kind of scientific research like in a volcano or in Antartica or something, I'm not sure. She's not around, anyway. Luca has a huge crush on his best friend, Simo, and has done for years.
The two boys are really close. They have sleepovers and trust each other implicitly. Simo lives with his parents. His older brother died a long time ago and Simo misses him, but no one in the family will really talk about him. Simo kind of has a crush on Luca, but not really? It's complicated. His parents are pretty homophobic so that puts him off talking about how he feels.
Anyway there's this noticeboard in Lombard where every week something gets put up. Luca always rushes to see what it says so he can share the news with an elderly neighbour, but one week the noticeboard says "LUCA AND SIMO ARE IN LOVE". Both boys are absolutely shocked by this. Simo especially is just cringing - because it might be true but he doesn't want the whole world to know! Besides how would someone else know when they don't?!
But they do both want to be boyfriend not boy friends. I do think there are very sweet elements of the book - the way they fall in love is good. But I found it a bit ethereal and not really grounded enough for me. It ended on a cliffhanger so I kind of would be interested in the next part of the story - but the writing just didn't do it for me. I'm giving it three out of five.
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