In this irresistible beach read—perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Zoella’s Girl Online—America’s favorite pop goddess flees the spotlight to Maine to recover from her latest breakup. Only to fall head over heels for a down-to-earth local guy and be faced with an impossible decision: him or her music.

After getting her heart shattered for the thousandth time, multiplatinum pop icon Lily Ross is escaping her high-profile, crazy life and heading to an island in middle-of-nowhere Maine with her best friends. She has three months to focus on herself, her music, her new album—anything but guys. This summer is going to be different.

That is . . . until Lily meets sweet and charming Noel Bradley, who is so different from anyone she’s ever dated. Suddenly Lily’s “summer of me” takes an unexpected turn, and she finds herself falling deeper and harder than ever before. But even though Lily loves Noel, she loves her music and her fans, too. And come August when it’s time to leave Maine and go back out on tour, she will be forced to choose between them.

Ah, September… that month of brilliant days and cool nights, of wide blue skies and golden haystacks, of blooming asters and changing leaves. Those of you who– like me– deign to call yourself students know that September means the official kickoff of the academic year, as if at some point during that post-Labour day rush the sands of time themselves haltingly resumed their flow, once again subject to the constraints of Deadlines and Commitments in the fading summer sun. But there are also those of you who– like me– lag behind the change in calendar, the stragglers who refuse to bid a perennial farewell to the dog days of heat and unchecked lazing, refuse to remove your oversized rose-tinted sunglasses, refuse to trade Fantasies and Sci-Fi’s and Contemporaries for that non-fiction gibberish of academia until the last possible moment.

If you fit this criteria and are indeed on the lookout for that last epic summer weekend, Sing may be the concomitant novel for you. This newfangled gem by neoteric author Vivi Green is the literary embodiment of all things summer: beachy, star-studded, and dry as the high midsummer sun.

When I picked up Sing from my cherished local Target– 20% off the cover price! What fun!– I was anticipating the sweet, sentimental contemporary its blurb screamed. I was hoping for something sappy yet amusing, tired yet convivial, stereotyped yet worth every last penny. In other words: I was expecting a prototypal YA romance. I mean, if Jennifer E. Smith wrote six… it really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Never have I been so wrong. If anything, Sing was a chore to read– a far cry from the dreamy escape horse on which we all hedged bets. (Unless, of course, you prefer to vacation in bland woolly spaces, preoccupied by someone else’s processed melodrama and other such fabricated problems, in which case by all means read on.) The characters are relentlessly self-absorbed and wholly vapid, lifelong best friends who keep secrets and resent one another behind closed doors. The plot itself is simply boring. I remain unimpressed by the romance and unhappy with the bottom line.

2/5 stars– not terrible, but a disappointment nonetheless. In the eternal words of Sir Winston Churchill, Sing has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. Read at your own risk, and be warned– I expect no stupefaction when you find that this songbird is in fact dead in the water.

I’ll keep you posted,