Maren had one summer left to win him back. So she made a plan.The plan was simple: show up at the Strawberry Festival, look good, and let Liam see her thriving without him.Let him wonder. Let him remember why he drove twenty minutes to her house every Friday night for two years.Let him realize that breaking up with her in March had been a mistake.There was just one problem.Her best friend Darcy figured it out in four seconds flat, over a strawberry-rhubarb pie at the festival."You're not over him, Maren. I can see it in the way you haven't looked at the pie once.""I'm healed. I'm moving on. I'm eating pie.""That's not pie. That's denial with a crimped edge."Maren is done being heartbroken. She is going to be the architect of her own comeback, even if it means a little quiet sabotage along the way.But Vermont summers are small, and secrets don't stay buried at the bottom of the quarry.There is a midnight swim that goes wrong.There is a note hidden in a costume pocket.There is Zach's garage, full of things nobody was supposed to find.There is a phone call that changes everything, and a community-theater production where two people perform the parts of their lives.And there is the slow, terrifying realization that the boy she planned her whole summer around might not be the person worth winning at all.As the festival lights fade and September closes in, Maren learns that some plans fall apart so the truth can finally come out.That growing up means admitting what you actually want.And that the bravest thing she can do is stop performing and tell someone the truth before the summer ends for good.Everything That Mattered Before September is a tender, voice-driven YA coming-of-age novel about first heartbreak, female friendship, summer secrets, self-sabotage, honest confessions, and the ache of one last season before everything changes.Perfect for readers who love bittersweet last-summer stories, messy lovable narrators, small-town YA, and the emotional honesty of Jandy Nelson and Nina LaCour. A standalone coming-of-age novel.