Start with The Blue Castle for a woman leaving a family that made her small, Frederica for a young guardian of unruly siblings, or The Enchanted April for a season away that changes everything. All three end happily. Each entry below says plainly how its book ends, because not all six do. Last verified 30 September 2026.
Content note: Just for the Summer includes a neglectful, emotionally abusive parent, a parent in prison, PTSD, and anxiety and panic attacks. Each book below has its own short note.
AI-assisted desk research. Editorial contact: Alex, Highstreett founder.
What Highstreett returned for “I loved Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez for Emma finally getting free of a mother who made her feel small, Justin suddenly having to raise his younger siblings, and a summer-only arrangement on an island that turns into real love. I want a romance with a happy ending that takes a damaging parent seriously. What should I read next?”
- The Simple Wild, K.A. Tucker (2018)
- It Happened One Summer, Tessa Bailey (2021)
- Things You Save in a Fire, Katherine Center (2019)
- Funny Story, Emily Henry (2024)
- The Friend Zone, Abby Jimenez (2019)
- The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren (1934)
See this result · run 30 September 2026
Editor’s verdict: The 30 September run took the damaging parent seriously: The Simple Wild, Things You Save in a Fire and It Happened One Summer all put a difficult parent at the centre of a romance. It found nothing for Justin raising his siblings, it included Funny Story and Abby Jimenez's own The Friend Zone, which most lists already name, and it dated The Unhoneymooners to 1934 when it is a 2019 novel. Those six are its unedited result; the six below are our separate editorial picks.
Why these picks follow the family, not the fake dating
Just for the Summer is sold on its curse: every time Justin or Emma breaks up with someone, their ex meets the love of their life, so they agree to date each other and cancel it out. That is the hook, and most read-alike lists answer it with more fake-dating romances set in summer. But the book's weight is elsewhere. Emma is still being hurt by a mother who neglected her, and Justin has to take on his three younger siblings. The six picks follow those two stories, and the summer away that lets them change.
We read four read-alike lists in full on 30 September 2026: LibraryReads, Mid-Continent Public Library, She Reads and What We Reading. None of the six below appears on any of them, and every title they do list is a recent contemporary novel. That is a finding about those four pages, not a claim that nobody has made these pairings. The publisher and bookseller links support the edition details; the matches and mismatches are our editorial judgement.
If it was Emma getting free of her mother
What stays with you after the curse gag is Emma learning that the mother who shaped her is never going to change, and deciding to stop waiting. No list we checked answers that. These two older novels are about exactly that escape, one with a happy ending and one without.
1. The Blue Castle, L. M. Montgomery (1926)
Classic romantic comedy · short · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: Happy ending.
Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried and treated as a joke by a controlling mother and a large, disapproving family. When she is told she has only a year to live, she stops obeying: she moves out, says what she thinks and proposes to Barney Snaith, the town's disreputable recluse, on the understanding that it is only for the time she has left. He takes her to his cabin on an island in a Muskoka lake. It is Just for the Summer's shape a century early: an arrangement with an end date, an island, and a woman leaving the family that made her small.
Differs: It is a 1920s Canadian comedy of manners with no sex on the page. There is a late twist that is best not read about in advance. By the author of Anne of Green Gables, and the only book she set entirely outside Prince Edward Island.
Content note: A cruel, controlling family and a serious medical diagnosis.
Check the edition · Union Square & Co. paperback, 2024; 240 pages
2. Now, Voyager, Olive Higgins Prouty (1941)
Literary women's fiction · 1940s Boston · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: No conventional happy ending, and the love interest is married.
Charlotte Vale, a Boston woman nearing forty, has been bullied by her mother all her life. After a breakdown she is treated at a sanatorium, then goes on a cruise and falls in love. The heart of the book is what comes next: Charlotte building a life on her own terms and facing her mother again. Like Just for the Summer, it treats mental-health treatment as something that helps rather than something to hide.
Differs: Read the ending note above before you start. The man Charlotte loves is married, the affair ends with the voyage, and the book settles for something other than a couple walking off together. It is better known as the 1942 Bette Davis film than as a novel.
Content note: A mother's emotional abuse, a breakdown and psychiatric treatment, and an affair with a married man.
Check the edition · Feminist Press paperback, 2004; a US edition, available from Blackwell's in the UK
If it was Justin suddenly raising his siblings
Justin's side of the book is the part fake-dating lists skip completely: a young man who has to become a parent to his brothers and sister overnight. Both of these are about that, one as a comedy and one over twenty years.
3. Frederica, Georgette Heyer (1965)
Regency romantic comedy · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: Happy ending.
Frederica Merriville has, in practice, brought up her younger brothers and sister, and she arrives in London determined to find her beautiful sister a good marriage. She asks a distant connection, the bored Marquis of Alverstoke, for help. He finds himself drawn into the chaos of her boisterous younger brothers, and then to Frederica. A heroine carrying her siblings is the part of Justin's story it shares, told with Heyer's comedy.
Differs: It is set in 1818, the romance is entirely chaste and the pace is leisurely. Frederica has no damaging parent to escape; her problem is responsibility, not cruelty.
Content note: None of note.
Check the edition · Arrow UK paperback, 2019; 384 pages
4. Saint Maybe, Anne Tyler (1991)
Literary family novel · long, gentle · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: Hopeful; the love story arrives late.
Ian Bedloe is seventeen when two deaths in his family leave his late brother's three children without parents. Convinced he is partly to blame, he gives up college to help raise them, and the novel follows him over some twenty years as he learns to be their parent. It is the only book we found that takes Justin's situation, a young man made responsible for children overnight, as its whole subject.
Differs: This is literary fiction, not a romance: Ian's own engagement comes only near the end. It is warm and funny in Anne Tyler's quiet way, but it is a long family novel, and it is well known rather than a hidden find.
Content note: The deaths of two parents, grief and guilt; this page does not describe how they die.
Check the edition · Vintage UK paperback, 2023; 464 pages
If it was the summer away that turns into something
Most lists match the island and the word 'summer'. On their own those are the weakest reason to pick a book like this one, so these two keep the season away only where it changes the people in it.
5. The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim (1922)
Classic comic novel · short · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: Happy ending.
Four unhappy Englishwomen who barely know each other rent a castle in Italy for the month of April. Away from husbands, duty and grey London, each of them changes, and love turns up where they had given up on it. It is a time-limited escape that becomes real, which is what the summer on the island does for Emma and Justin.
Differs: There is no single couple at the centre and very little conflict; it is gentle and funny rather than emotionally raw. Choose it for the feeling of a season away, not for the hard family material.
Content note: Unhappy marriages; otherwise none.
Check the edition · Penguin Modern Classics paperback, 2012
6. This Rough Magic, Mary Stewart (1964)
Romantic suspense · Corfu · on none of the four lists checked
Ending: Happy ending.
Lucy Waring, an out-of-work London actress, spends the summer at her sister's villa on Corfu, next door to a famous, reclusive actor and his standoffish son. Then a body washes up on the beach. Read it for the summer abroad and a slow-burning attraction to a guarded man.
Differs: It is romantic suspense: the mystery drives the book, and the romance is secondary. It shares the anchor's setting and tension rather than its family story, which makes it the loosest match here.
Content note: A death and some violence.
Check the edition · Hodder UK paperback; 416 pages
The honest bit
The way this page is most likely to mis-sell a romance reader is the ending. The Blue Castle, Frederica, The Enchanted April and This Rough Magic end happily. Saint Maybe ends hopefully, with its love story arriving only near the end. Now, Voyager does not give you a happy-ever-after at all, and it is on the list anyway, clearly marked, because no book we found handles a daughter's recovery from her mother better.
The second mismatch is era. All six are older than Just for the Summer, and none has its open-door romance. If you want the same era and heat, you have probably already been handed Abby Jimenez's own Part of Your World, Yours Truly and The Friend Zone, plus Funny Story, The Wedding Crasher, The Boyfriend Project, The Wedding Date and the rest of the fake-dating shelf. We left those out on purpose.
Before you choose
What should I read after Just for the Summer?
For Emma's story, a woman escaping a controlling mother, try The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery, which also has an arrangement with an end date, an island and a happy ending. For Justin's, a young man raising his siblings, try Frederica by Georgette Heyer for comedy or Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler for something deeper.
Does The Blue Castle have a happy ending?
Yes. The Blue Castle is a romantic comedy and ends happily. It has a late twist that is better not to read about before you start.
Book search can narrow this down: say whether it was Emma's mother, Justin's siblings or the summer that you want more of, and whether the happy ending is non-negotiable.
Search for your next book
For another romance page where the obvious matches missed the point, see Books like Beach Read, which follows the writers and the grief under the jokes rather than the beach.
