Summer Girls, by Jennifer Dugan

Birdie is an obsessed social media influencer who ignominiously crashed her boyfriend's car on a live broadcast (it was justified -- she'd just caught him cheating on her).  As the daughter of a real estate mogul who is gentrifying their summer community -- a quaint small beach town -- she's hardly a popular figure locally.

Cass is the local who long ago swore off having anything to do with "summer girls" (the ones who come to the beach only during the season and then flip you off when they return to their real homes in August.  And as the daughter of the man running a non-profit that fights the aforementioned gentrification, she has every reason to distrust Birdie and her family.

But as a consequence of the car crash, Birdie is forced to give up her socials and Cass is hired to watch over and babysit her.  The two girls initially despise each other but soon enough become good friends and lovers.  That doesn't remove the class-based tensions between them.

With a predictable format and setting, it takes above-average characters to redeem this beach read.  The girls and their class awareness have enough depth to make them interesting to watch.  Unfortunately, the story stumbles at key points as it tries to explain changes that, while necessary for the conclusion, are sudden and implausible.  Having done such a good job of showing why Bridie and Cass should not be able to make peace, the fact that they do needs to be better justified and explained.  The final coming together and Grand Speech is pure Hollywood and felt forced, robbing the story of the emotional punch it called for.