Haley Pham: Just Friends (Atria Books 2026)
Blair and Declan have been inseparable since childhood. They knew each other better than they knew themselves. They waited until the end of high school to confess their feelings for each other, but unfortunately their story took a negative turn and they ended up breaking up with anger and sadness. Now, four years later, Blair returns to her seaside hometown of Seabrook to help her mother to care for her aunt Lottie. In order to do something and earn a little money, Blair takes a job at a coffee shop – only to discover that it is run by none other than Declan. The boy she loved the most in the world and whose loss she still hasn’t gotten over. Will they have a second chance? What is more important to them: the past or the future?
I don’t like romantic stories, but I wanted to read this because I follow the author on YouTube and was curious about her first book. I’m glad I did because it’s not an average love story. We get to know the current days and the events four years ago that led to the breakup on a dual timeline. What I liked best was that, in addition to the love story, we got to know the relationship of the (now grown-up) children with their parents, what expectations mean, and how important conversation is to understand each other. One of the most important messages of the book is the process of grief and the role of family and friends in this process. I really liked that it included Vietnamese-American culture. The descriptions were lively and colorful, as if we were there ourselves – or watching a YouTube video.
Haley Pham is a Vietnamese-American writer and content creator. She has been making YouTube videos since she was 12, first on makeup-fashion-dance topics, then she captured the lifestyle of teenagers, and later switched to book topics. Her debut novel was published this year and she is already working on the next one. She and her husband, YouTuber Ryan Trahan, live in Texas.
