This was a sweet read. I did feel like the main character's transformation from shy and awkward to hot and incredible was a bit fast, but it was still fun and enjoyable. Definitely for fans of Shakespeare and camp romance. ( )

Gr 9 Up—Teen genius Beatrice agrees to a four-week theater camp to prove to her parents that her smarts can
translate to social intelligence. A strong neurodiverse character leads an equally diverse cast through theater
shenanigans that center on growing relationships, taking risks, and a dash of enemies-to-lovers' romance.

Naive, homeschooled Beatrice only has one goal in life: go to Oxford. However, her parents don’t think she’s ready, so they do what they think is best for her: send her to a Summer Academy in Connecticut, where she will not only learn to act in a Shakespearean play, she will have a detailed list of tasks to complete before her parents even think of letting her jet off to England by herself. She thinks its a terrible idea until she arrives and meets her future best friends Mia and Nolan, her best frenemy Shelby and her first ever crush/boyfriend Nikhil. This was just the fun, fresh rom-com I needed to wrap up a summer of reading. It’s not your typical enemies to lovers trope. Not only does Bea forge her way through these tasks, she discovers her true self, learning that relationships are an important part of life, not just the friendships but the relationship between her and her parents. ( )

Here we have a girl who is not only too smart for her own good, but lives in her head 24/7. When she is accepted at Oxford after having been home schooled most of her life, her probably too mellow parents who are sex therapists, belatedly realize she's far from ready to enter the real world. Despite her outrage at their concerns, Beatrice has some well-buried worries along the same line. After all, she has no friends, has never been on a date, and must make a list of tasks to complete in order to convince her parents and herself that she could survive in another country. Her parents' solution is for her to attend a Shakespeare summer camp on the east coast. Following her navigation through that is fun to read. She's adopted by two veteran campers, one with real acting ambitions, the other intent upon a career in high fashion and costuming. They alternately love her and kick her in the tail as needed. Add in a mean girl with her own fears about her future, and a very handsome and talented boy with acting aspirations who creates some scary feelings every time he's with Beatrice, and you have a great cast for a very satisfying story. ( )

This was quite cute! A nice YA romance, taking place at a Shakespeare camp, in which the Beatrice/Benvolio inspired romance, and other depicted relationships, benefit from references to Shakespeare without being direct retellings of anything in particular. The friendships and camp life lessons were all fun to read. I thought that the main character suffered from seeming a little stereotypical as an "awkward genius", but on the other hand a lot of her personal preferences and situational reactions were explicable responses to her life experience. ( )