Review: "Wish You Weren't Here" by Erin Baldwin

Wish You Weren't Here by Erin Baldwin
Published June 2024 via Viking Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Juliette and her mortal enemy have a good thing going—they turn up to each other's parties, trade the same lackluster birthday gift back and forth, and generally stay out of each other's way. Priya reigns during the school year, but in summer camp is all Juliette's own...until her final summer as a camper, when Priya shows up. At her camp. In her cabin. And there's nothing Juliette can do about it.

I read this for 1) summer camp and 2) the novelty of YA enemies who aren't awful to each other, and it did not disappoint on either end. Now, make no mistake—this is not summer camp like you've seen it in real life. This is a very YA-novel summer camp in which, despite the director's protestations, money seems to be no object and a two-story cabin can be assigned to only two(!) campers. Some suspension of disbelief is required, as is an acceptance that side characters and plots will not get their fair due.

But the lack of enemy drama? I love it. The book is basically enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, but it's pretty low-key on the romance front and manages to keep the drama somewhere other than between Juliette and Priya. I'm reminded, minus the turn to romance, of a playful enmity I had with a classmate when I was about twelve—we didn't actually wish each other ill, but it was fun to argue, and neither of us took it personally. (We're no longer in contact beyond the barest of social media interaction, but I bet we'd get on well as adults.) Juliette and Priya have a similar dynamic—even when they're arguing, they're not cruel about it, and it makes it a much more fun book to read. I'd have been thrilled if this had been a book about friendship rather than romance, actually (as much as I love a good f/f story, I love a good friendship story more...and they're few and far between in YA), but the dynamic is fun enough here to bump it up to four stars.

(Don't pin your real-life summer-camp hopes and dreams on this book, though. That's like me pinning my early-2000s southern US boarding school hopes and dreams on 1940s British girls boarding school fiction. Expectation vs. reality...)

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