IF WE WERE A MOVIE

A Black high school senior on Long Island falls for her archnemesis.

Despite her mom and best friends insisting she should relax and enjoy the summer, Rochelle Coleman is determined to get her first job in order to round out her college application. She’s obsessed with attending the same Ivy League school as her ma and late dad. Rochelle is willing to do anything to get in—even rebuffing her childhood friend, Afro-Latine Amira Rodriguez, whose social butterfly personality feels too distracting. When Rochelle lands a job at Horizon Cinema, the local Black-owned theater, she’s surprised to learn that Amira not only works there but will be her boss. Rochelle’s prickly, competitive personality causes her to clash with her new coworkers and inadvertently hurt Amira’s feelings. But when a series of mishaps lead to the revelation that the Horizon is in financial trouble, the teen crew comes together to save the theater and find the culprit behind the pranks. All the while, Rochelle is trying to understand her growing feelings for Amira. The story contains several popular tropes, including an opposites-attract romance and a small-town business rescue, but it’s lacking in nuance and rich character development. The process of solving the mystery isn’t suspenseful and the guilty party’s identity feels obvious. The novel’s diverse cast of primary and secondary characters is both welcome and refreshing, however.

Enjoyable enough but predictable and lacking in depth.