This Might Get Awkward

By: Kara McDowell

Narrated by: Reba Buhr

Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Seventeen-year-old Gemma’s favorite kind of beach is an empty one. Social interactions are too much for her to handle. She always says the wrong thing - if she manages to say anything at all. She can’t even bring herself to speak to her longtime crush, Beau Booker, without losing sleep over her own awkwardness.

During a solo outing to her favorite beach, Gemma realizes - to her horror - that the popular kids from school have shown up to throw a party. Before she can sneak away (and possibly puke behind her car) Gemma is pulled into the action and ends up talking to Beau, who asks her to pretend that they’re “close”. Gemma is too flustered and flattered to refuse, and mostly, she’s wondering why Beau is talking to her at all...right up until the moment when he falls off the boat, hits his head, and ends up in a coma.

After rescuing Beau from the water, Gemma is mistaken for Beau’s girlfriend by his friends and family, including his mysterious older brother, Griff, who has returned to town after a year away. Gemma tries to correct the record, but her social anxiety (and a nosy reporter) gets in the way at every turn. Before she knows it, she’s in too deep to backtrack. And when Beau’s warm, boisterous family pulls Gemma into their orbit, she realizes how much she wants to keep them in her life.

For the first time, Gemma has everything she’s ever wanted: friends, big family dinners, and Griff - a boy who she can be herself around. But how can she embrace her new dream life when everything is built on a lie?

©2022 Kara McDowell (P)2022 Scholastic Inc

Addicting story about a girl trying to escape herself

Our hero is on the edge of personal madness as she tries (and mostly fails) to construct a life out of the wreckage in her mind. She’s brave and afraid all at the same time. Great look into the mind of someone with social anxiety.

A perfect spring read. Sweet, cute, and with a solid gold heart

“While you were sleeping” is perhaps my favorite romcom of all time so when I read that this book coming out had a similar premise I was sold even before I read it. The fact that the book was just so much better than I could have imagined was the gold at the end of the rainbow! We meet a socially awkward main character with a heart of gold, a hot boy who has an accident and his brooding brother. The premise may seem familiar like a favorite pair of slippers but it is carried out with*chef’s kiss*. The characters feel real, the writing is extremely readable and the narrator does a wonderful job. I got heart zings, tingles, laughs, sympathetic cringes… everything I wanted and more.

For Lovers of "While You Were Sleeping" movie

3.5 Stars
That was a cute retelling for the movie "While You Wete Sleeping" (not the K-Drams) and I enjoyed it
So the story is about Gemma who was in love with her classmate Bo for as long as she remembers,one day there was a party and Bo falls doen and Gemma saves him .. but he is in a coma and everyone mistakes Gemma for Bo's girlfriend, and she goes along with it to ease her social anxiety, but what she didn't expect is Griff .. Bo's older brother who slowly became her friend a d she develops feelings for him
I liked the relationship between Griff and Gemma a d I felt the connection between them .. but the ending fragged a bit in my opinion, other than that it was a nice, cozy read