Review: "Going Bicoastal" by Dahlia Adler

 

Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler
Published June 2023 via Wednesday Books
★★★★

It's the summer before senior year, and Natalya has a decision to make: stay in New York with her father throughout the break, or fly out to LA to reconnect with her mother? Follow up on a longstanding crush on a mysterious redhead, or hurdle toward the unknown?

Natalya has to choose—but the reader doesn't.

I would have read this for the cover alone (I'm shallow like that), or the Sliding Doors scenario (weirdly, this is one of my pet tropes), but also, while I haven't made it through Adler's entire backlist (either because I'm lazy or because my TBR list just never ends as it is), I've loved every one of her books that I've read...and observant readers will find calls back to previous books here. In this case, I'm here for the non-issue bisexuality, Natalya's ability to be both low-key awkward and willing to put herself out there, and the way there are some similarities in the ways things pan out—but also some key differences. Also, it's really nice to see a Jewish main character who...I'm not sure how to say this. She adheres to something of a middle ground of Judaism: keeps kosher, but not to the extent that every kitchen has to be kashered; chooses to make Shabbat dinners a priority; has ties within both her Jewish and non-Jewish communities. I note this because I've read a few books where the main character is Hasidic or similar and keeps to very strict religious laws, not always by choice, and plenty of books where the main character is culturally Jewish (had a bat or bar mitzvah, eats Chinese food on Christmas, the end), but very few where Judaism is an active but relatively casual part of the character's life. It's nice to see.

Now, back to things working out differently in each storyline: I love this aspect. I've read too many books where the "different paths" scenario still comes back to "but she ends up with the same guy at the end because it's Meant to Be!!!" and it always drives me up the wall and around the corner. I keep reading books with this trope precisely because I want something more along the lines of Going Bicoastal—where the character is fundamentally the same person regardless of where things go, but where her choices genuinely take her down different paths and with different people. (If anything, I wanted a tiny bit more difference from Natalya's post-summer choices, but you know...quibbles are my character flaw.) I won't spoil the details of Natalya's summer romance(s), but I think...I think she'll be just fine. And now I'm off to figure out how to make the weirdest thing I learned about in the book, which is a limonana—which somehow, despite the name, does not have banana in it.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.