In the Shape of a Summer

A summer she never lived. A love she never saw. A story that shaped her anyway.

In a quiet apartment above a laundromat, a teenage girl curls into a borrowed notebook and begins to write the summer love story she was never told. Her parents are gone-just names on a birth certificate and echoes in her bones. But through her vivid, aching imagination, she gives them life: Camry, sharp as a sunbeam, and Lancer, all swagger and soft rebellion.

Set in a town where rumors run faster than buses and boys in borrowed cars chase destiny, this story-within-a-story unfolds with tenderness, tension, and teenage magic. What begins as a dream becomes a lifeline. And by the end, the narrator isn't just chasing the past-she's writing her way toward herself.

Bittersweet, lyrical, and quietly rebellious, this novella is for anyone who's ever stitched together a family from fragments-and dared to call it home.