Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennet
The story reminded me a little bit of This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith, but the male character made it different, completely different!
Bailey has been messaging Alex for a very long time and they have a very close relationship because they talk all the time about movies, which is really beautiful to read about because they bond over something that both feel passionate about. But Bailey has to move to California to live with her father and surprisingly the city where she is moving to is the same city where Alex lives, yet she´s afraid to tell him since he could be a creepy old man. So, when she moves she decides to meet everyone in the city to see if she can find Alex. On the other hand, her father gets her a job a local museum, where they have rooms with different themes. That´s where she meets Porter, who is extremely annoying, yet awfully handsome. We can pretty much tell that there will be a problem there. Sadly, Bailey is put at the ticket booth, where she will have to work with Porter most of the time. Yet as time passes by, she starts realizing that Porter may not be a bad person at all, but Alex is nowhere to be seen! Her plans of meeting Alex are crushed, but her relationship with Porter may be getting better, believe it or not, she may be falling in love with him. But there is only one problem that Bailey doesn´t seem to notice... Porter is Alex.
I know this is going to sound so weird, but I loved Porter since the beginning! I know, it sounds crazy, but something about him seemed very charming to me, therefore, I couldn´t wait to meet his romantic side. I loved Porter´s character because he was different to all my other summer YA novel boyfriends. Porter had a background story that made my small heart hurt and this whole surfer legacy thing he had with him was surprisingly hot and charming, not only in the sense of making him better, but it made him a more well-rounded character. He definitely had a sad past, but he showed us how he had gotten over it and it was beautiful to read about him and his family. On the hand, his romantic side was adorable and swoony, I swear that I wanted to marry him with his pocket snacks!
Bailey was a character that I didn´t really like because she was annoying with her whole feelings for Alex and Porter. At some point, I started getting annoyed by the way she wanted to hold on to both "characters," when she could be happy with only Porter. Her need of having both of them seemed a little selfish to me, which I think hurt characters. But it was interesting to see how she was managing to get used to the new environment with her father. It was really cool to see the main character that actually liked being with her father after parents being divorced because, in other stories, we usually see how the girl hates going to the other family.
I loved the love story transforming from hate to love because it was funny to read the things the conversations they shared and I absolutely loved every place that was mentioned in the book (well, except the places where bad things happened), it was lovely to able to see a whole city from a stranger´s eyes and being guided by a charming surfer.
Another thing that I loved about the book was the quotes that the author decided to add at the start of every chapter! I loved reading all of them, even though I don´t really like movies, I would get excited because many of them were movies that every teenager has seen and that has grown with (like Mean Girls!).
Also, the fact that the author decided to tell us from the beginning that Alex was Porter was extremely clever because it makes the reader get excited to see how Bailey reacts to that piece of information!
I would like to take a section to mention that the hardcover version is beautiful because the book itself without the jacket is like a brown-wine color that looks beautiful and contrasts so well with the yellow-brown cover.
I believe this is a book that is definitely for summer, but it has drama and we all know that sometimes we really want some sad background stories and lots of drama after reading too many swoony summer stories.
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