First Summer
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 18, 2026
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
“For readers who loved Call Me By Your Name.” —Dua Lipa’s Service95
A dreamy debut novel about the summer love that changes two girls at the edge of adulthood.
“In the heat and the green haze that seemed to surround us both like a physical presence, I felt intensely awake.”
One afternoon at the start of summer, a teenage girl watches a new girl move in across the street. In Clara, she recognizes the same loneliness that she feels herself, but finds tenderness and laughter, too. Over hot, languid days spent talking and reading side by side in the garden, the narrator is awakened to the possibility of a true connection with another human being, free of the self-consciousness she feels with others.
Meanwhile, in a distant fictional galaxy, Nadia the space explorer—the protagonist of a childhood book series beloved by both girls—traverses the known universe with her companion Rosa. Their imagined adventures make sense of new and powerful feelings.
First Summer captures the innocence and agony of adolescence and the exquisite promise of love on the cusp of adulthood: a moment where fantasy is still vivid in the mind, even as adulthood looms. This story of the first summer of love echoes throughout the characters’ lives and will change them forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A lonely teenager finds love and friendship with another girl in Turkish translator Oklap's tender debut. The unnamed narrator reflects back several decades on the stifling summer when she was 16. She's quiet and mostly keeps to herself, living with her single mother and occasionally riding bikes with her only friend Joe. When Joe tells her about their neighbor's granddaughter, Clara, who's visiting for the summer, her curiosity is piqued. She begins riding her bicycle to the neighbor's house to spend time with Clara, and the girls soon become "almost comically inseparable," bound by their shared awkwardness, loneliness, and longing for connection. Both girls obsess over a series of science fiction novels about a space traveler named Nadia; her rescued orphan companion, Rosa; and a cat named Lynx. Interstitial chapters follow the crew's adventures in a jalopy spaceship, battling space bandits and righting wrongs, and Oklap hints at parallels between her leads and the characters in the sci-fi novels. As the summer progresses, the girls' bond deepens and they develop a physical and emotional attraction to each other. The narrator's desire feels like a "small wave lapping at my chest from the inside," making the conclusion, in which life gets in the way, all the more devastating. Oklap has crafted a crisply written, memorable portrait of first love, burgeoning queer identity, and bittersweet self-discovery. This will tug on readers' heartstrings.
