Shortened Summary: After a summer spent in Alola, Mizuki dreads her inevitable return to Sinnoh where her parents will decide every aspect of her life. Faced with this upcoming end to the most freeing summer of her life, Mizuki plans to live in the moment, enjoying Alola to the fullest extent she can until she leaves.

Review: Although it was one of the shorter stories in this year's nominees, Alola, Alola is by no means one you should pass up. Centered around themes of freeing versus restrictive parenting, choice versus submitting, even cold and warm, this tale is an almost fully fleshed out tale in its own right. While I felt that Mizuki could stand to be a bit more developed, overall she was a fun character to read about and I found her to be very relatable. The battles were cool too, but could've been expanded on more and the rival was neat, even though I wish we could've had more on him. I love the ending with him however as it was a cool way to end such a story and could easily become a duology.

Overall the themes were well explorered but the characters could have been developed slightly more, although Mizuki was still thought out well for a short story character, I just wish we'd had a little more on her. Of the stories I read in this category it was one that stood out for it's unique central theme of being an internal conflict with very little outside influences besides Mizuki's parents, lending more time to exploring her personality and relationships with others. Even the places it could be improved on are very minimal and it deserved a place in this year's PWAs.