BOOK REVIEW: Four Ways to Wear A Dress by Gillian Libby

What a summer beach read, rom-com should be!

This is everything I have ever wanted in a summer beach read. I’m not a huge rom-com reader, and friends to lovers is my least favorite trope, but I absolutely adored this book. If you are going on vacation, hanging by the pool or relaxing at the beach any time soon, make sure this book finds its way into your bag.

Basically Millie is a hot mess. She gets laid off from your New York marketing job and with the support of her two college friends who landed in New York with her, Millie decides to take a chance and do something for herself, you know, without really thinking it all through. And that decision takes her to Peacock Bay, California to reunite with Quincy, the one college friend who did not get swept up in the lights and lure of NYC but, instead, went back to her small surfer village hometown.

So, there is a total mash up of tropes that develop here. Obviously, there is the friends to lovers that I’ll get to, but there is also the friend’s hot brother and a fake relationship (sort of). It sounds a little confusing, but it all makes sense and works. One can’t overlook the magical black dress that is shared among the four friends. It’s the sisterhood of the traveling dress; an object that comes to symbolize the connection between them and the belief that the dress will see them through life’s biggest moments. I really enjoyed how this subtle object weaves itself quietly through the entire story.

Peacock Bay is a beautiful setting. My favorite place to go is Encinitas, California which is known for its surfing, so I pictured this throughout the book every time a new aspect of Peacock Bay was described. A small town where people ride bikes to the shops. Everyone knows everyone. The coffee shop opens a little later than usual because the surf is good. As you read you can almost feel the sea breeze and smell the salty air. The picket fences make you want to scream with jealousy.

However, this book takes a very modern approach to the characters’ lives and interactions with each other. From Facetiming to making grids on Instagram, it almost made me laugh with how accurate the obsession can be with our phones.

The main female characters in Peacock Bay, Quincy, her sister Amelia and their friend Alana are all Social Media Influencers. Everything they do revolves around staging the perfect pictures and captions for Instagram. Their primary focus, besides getting sponsors and bringing in some money, is to present Peacock Bay as a surfer’s utopia. There is reference to the pandemic and how it has affected the town and tourism, but thankfully it is not dwelled upon. Millie dreams of having a similar following and the influence as these women, but like I said earlier, she’s a hot mess.

The characters are cute, and while they may seem simple, Libby does a great job of making sure that the struggles that lie under the sugar coating of what they post to their feeds come through. Alana can be a little bit of you you know what, but as the Alpha Influencer of the group she goes a little far at times forgetting that these are real women with real lives and real challenges.

While Millie thinks that she’s a failure and is only getting followers and a social media following because she posts all her mishaps, she is the biggest source of the themes that develop. Everyone knows what people post on social media are the best aspects of life, their perfectly happy moments, but it’s not what day to day life looks like. It takes Millie to make them realize that people want to relate to others on social media. They want to feel they are not alone. Millie shows some courage to open up and share her struggles and encourages Quincy to as well. Through her support of the women around her, Millie learns how to become the woman she has always wanted to be.

So, where does the romance come in? Well, Quincy has a hot older brother who also went to college with the ladies. A hot older brother that Millie has been crushing since college. After Pete graduated, he returned to Peacock Bay to take over the family hotel. There is obvious chemistry between the two from the moment they are reunited, but social media again can influence the things people do such as enter into a fake Instagram relationship to help promote the town and draw visitors. 

I did feel that the fake relationship was a weak point of the story. They were doing this for Instagram, but very little actually made it on Millie’s page and Pete is a social media ghost, and I honestly got a little tired of every conversation between the two involving their deal and the fakeness of the relationship. One of my biggest issues with friends to lovers is that there never seems to be very clear communication between the two people involved. That is the case here as well. Everyone likes to make assumptions, but no one is willing to actually use words. But thankfully, neither Millie or Pete were in a relationship coming into this, so no one externally gets hurt. I really hate that, like really.

With all that said, the steaminess is perfect. Not too crazy, but definitely steam worthy. I loved these two characters together, and even though I don’t think Pete’s character was as developed as it could be, I think he may be one of my favorite characters…behind Claire and Sage.

Overall, this is a story about overcoming your own insecurities and believing in your abilities to succeed. Everyone struggles. Everyone has challenges, but everyone also has the ability to put themselves in a position that is good for them. Millie learned to trust herself. She learned that she needed to have confidence and do something that was going to make her happy. It’s not about other people, and through it all, she was able to help those around her.

Where does this land on my bookshelf?

I’ll be generous and place it on my top shelf. It’s towards the back, but it is still there in company with some of the best books I’ve read. I just loved the world that was built and the story that was told through it. I was truly able to escape reality and go surfing with Millie and shop at Little Goods and attend Alana’s parties. It just made me want to pack up my husband and head to a little surfer’s paradise and make our own story. And, isn’t that what books should do? Even with all the light and fluffy there were still some heavy topics addressed including the impact of adult ADHD and autism.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Four Ways to Wear a Dress hits the stores on June 7.

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