Ah, summer: a time for long days hanging out at the pool with friends, culminating in a vacation to an exotic locale. Or, at least that's what Clara Shin has in mind. But what Clara actually gets is a summer working in her father’s Korean-Brazilian fusion food truck, the KoBra, beside her mortal enemy, Rose Carver. This is bad news for Clara, but great news for readers of this bubbly and fun summer read. As Clara reluctantly learns to tolerate Rose, a boy named Hamlet who works at a coffee shop near one of the KoBra’s regular stops catches Clara’s eye. Hamlet is cute, nice and sincere—exactly the things that prank-loving Clara isn’t. In fact, Clara’s built her identity on never taking anything seriously and never getting attached for long—just like her mother, a professional social media influencer who left for a jet-setting life when Clara was 4.
Clara expects she’ll join her mother for their planned trip to the resort town of Tulum in Mexico at the end of the summer, but she doesn’t expect to be a different person by the time the summer ends. As Clara and Rose become friends, Clara and Hamlet become more-than-friends and she begins to rethink her assumptions about both the present and the future.
Like the fusion cuisine of the KoBra, The Way You Make Me Feel is also a fusion of sorts, with Goo combining the sweet breeziness of a light summer read with the spice of a coming-of-age story that deals with having to leave part of yourself behind and grow into new relationships and new perspectives. Enjoy this book with a cool glass of lime juice for a true summer treat.
