On Sale Date: April 4th 2017
Pages: 400
Age Range: Young Adult
(review contains spoilers)
Bailey Rydell loves classic movies. Her love for it she shares online with Alex. They can talk for hours online about their favorites, but they have never met for real. She moves in with her dad who lives in the same California beach city as Alex, which isn't his real name. So Bailey is quite curious if she will ever meet him for real, but she doesn't dare to tell him yet how close by she lives. Is it just possible she walks by him without even knowing it?
Soon after her arrival in California, she lands a job in the local tourist-trap museum. There she makes new friends, first of all Porter Roth. He works as a security guard at the museum and soon they become more than just friends, altough it starts of as a love-hate relationship.
During the summer, which flies by in a whim, she has a great time with Porter, but also feels guilty when she doesn't tell Porter about Alex, and Alex about Porter. She has to choose whether to cling to a dreamy online fantasy in Alex or take a risk on an imperfect reality with Porter. The choice is both simpler and more complicated than she realizes, because Porter Roth is hiding a secret of his own: Porter is Alex…
Altough it was predictable at some points, I really enjoyed reading Alex Approximately. The book reminded me a lot of You've Got Mail. I really liked the setting of the California beach town. Even in the winter it get's you in the summer mood right away with all the surfing and tourists stuff going on. Bailey was a nice character, nothing that I haven't read in other YA novels though. I couldn't pinpoint anything specific about her, just the average girl. I really thought at some points it was a little too obvious for her not to notice before the big reveal in the end that Porter was Alex all the time. There where soo many clues but she didn't saw them. But hey, that left a fun and even more surprising wrap up of the end of the story!! I really liked the ending of it, it was a good conclusion to the story.
A very entertaining read with a thin plot, but good main characters and a fun summer setting in California, a perfect read for the coming spring!
