What if the love of your life has been sitting next to you on the bus, sharing your earbuds, for five years straight?
Lilly Jones is everyone’s favorite person at Venice Beach High — the girl who bakes brownies for classmates, tutors freshmen, and volunteers for every committee like her life depends on it. Because honestly? It kind of does. If she’s useful enough, maybe no one will notice that the girl behind the sun-streaked hair and wide smile is quietly falling apart.
Her anchor in all of it is Sean Sullivan — best friend since ninth grade, king of the terrible joke, and the only person on earth who can make her laugh so hard she forgets to doubt herself. They share earbuds on the bus, lose quarters at the Breakwater Arcade, and trade mixtapes with names like “Songs For When Phoebe Brightmore Is Being A Demon.”
Sean is also desperately, hopelessly, catastrophically in love with her.
But he’s built an entire personality out of self-deprecating humor specifically so Lilly will never, ever find that out. Because she is the most beautiful girl in any room she walks into, and he is the guy who makes her snort-laugh, and in his mind, those two roles don’t overlap.
Then Josh Whelan transfers in — all leather jacket and cheekbones and a beat-up guitar slung over his shoulder like a prop from a music video. He plays a moody song at the back-to-school bonfire and something cracks open in Lilly’s chest. She convinces herself this is what love is supposed to feel like: dramatic, breathless, slightly painful.
Meanwhile, Phoebe Brightmore — queen of the social hierarchy, contouring champion, and full-time nightmare — has set her own sights on Josh. And she is furious that he keeps drifting toward Lilly. So she launches a campaign of social sabotage that is as creative as it is cruel.
And somewhere in the mess of confused feelings, Lilly starts noticing things about Sean she somehow missed for five years — the way his eyes go soft when he looks at her, the way he remembers every small thing she’s ever said, the way his hand lingers on her back just a beat too long.
She starts having dreams about him that leave her flushed and confused in the morning.
And Sean? Sean is running out of jokes to hide behind.
Songs That Don’t Suck is a swoony, heartfelt, laugh-out-loud ’90s love story about the moment you realize the person who was always there — the one with the mixtape and the bad impressions and the peanut butter toast at midnight — was your person all along.
You were just too scared to reach for him.
Perfect for fans of ’90s nostalgia, high school drama, and ugly-crying over a boy who was right there the whole time.
