REVIEW: Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan

In Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan , Summers were Sam Holloway’s favorite time of year growing up. Leaving the Big Apple to wander around the beaches in Long Island was idyllic, freeing, and the time when she truly felt like herself. It didn’t hurt that Wyatt Pope stayed next door in his family’s beach house every summer too. As they turned from kids into teenagers, Sam noticed Wyatt in different ways. And it led to not only her first crush, but her first everything. Eventually even her first heartbreak when he walked away in his late teens to start a music career in California. That’s why, now at age thirty, Sam is a bit leery of visiting the family beach house with her fiancé Jack. The memories from fourteen years ago still linger. Even more so when Wyatt himself somehow shows up next door to spend some time at the beach.

“I feel like I’ve walked into an old photo album. How is it possible that he’s here and he’s exactly the same, doing all the same things?”

Everything Sam created in her orderly life seems in disarray after only a few quick moments in Wyatt’s presence. Her emotions are a mess. Her thoughts are jumbled. And Jack is pretty much clueless to her struggles. But as the truth about Sam and Wyatt’s past–and the reason things ended–unfold, they both have some soul searching to do. Because as many miles as Wyatt put between himself and Sam, and as careful as she’s been to avoid messy entanglements since their breakup, they are still drawn together like magnets. Given the different paths their lives have gone on, it will take some communication, forgiveness, and some serious compromises to reconcile it all.

‘He knew that his future was in music the way he knew the sun was coming up tomorrow. But then again, he had thought his future was Sam too.’

A second chance romance that picked up speed as it went along, Same Time Next Summer brought a sense of nostalgia along with its complicated story of first love and the fallout from decisions made.

‘I can’t believe I’ve traveled so far in my hunt for a happy life, and my happy life is right here.’

Content Warning: View Spoiler »Love triangle, cheating (secondary cast). « Hide Spoiler

While Same Time Next Summer had a decidedly different tone to it than Annabel Monaghan’s debut novel, Norah Goes Off Script, it still had her warm, evocative writing voice. Sam and Wyatt’s second chance romance drew me in right away. It did take some time for me to feel connected to them for some reason. (And not only because it was a love triangle.) I think it was where we saw them at odds–or at least not speaking to each other–in the present day. But when the dual timeline moved forward to where everything fell apart in the past and we truly got a sense of where Wyatt and Sam ended up in their adult lives, that was when it all clicked for me. As well as when I realized that it wasn’t just their teenage relationship that underwent drastic changes, but the dynamics that shifted in both of their families wreaked havoc on them, too.

Sam and Wyatt both found themselves at a turning point in their lives at the beginning of this book. Sam’s carefully curated world and her safe relationship with fiancé Jack seemed perfect at the surface level–until she was face to face again with her first love, Wyatt. And I honestly think most readers will understand Sam’s dilemma in some way. Fourteen years apart hadn’t dampened her feelings for him, nor had it extinguished the anger over how everything ended. It just seemed like over the years, Sam dulled everything down in her life to avoid conflicts, big scary emotions, or even reconciling things that happened years ago. And it was sad to see someone who used to be so passionate and open become so closed off.

We also got Wyatt’s POV, a little less frequently than Sam’s, but it was no less important. Seeing her through his eyes over time, it was easy to notice the dramatic difference in both of them, really. I did love watching as they fell for each other a little bit more with every year as they grew up. It was sweet, tender, and felt oh so true. Even what eventually split them apart seemed like Wyatt and Sam were typical teens, not knowing how to communicate and dealing with things in a rather selfish manner. I wasn’t sure how it could all work out. But Monoghan did a very nice job tying everything together in a way that brought out the best parts of Sam and Wyatt.

QOTD: Do you have a favorite memory from your childhood summer vacation months?

Book Info:

Publication: June 6, 2023 | G.P. Putnam’s Sons |

The ultimate summer nostalgia read, about an engaged woman who comes face to face with her first love who she hasn’t seen in fourteen years, but who she spent every summer with from age five to seventeen when he broke her heart, calling into question everything she thought she knew about their love story, and herself.

“An unforgettable love story…Bursting with the magic of first love, it’s everything I want in a summer romance.”–Carley Fortune, author of Every Summer After

Beach Rules:
Do take long walks on the sand.
Do put an umbrella in every cocktail.
Do NOT run into your first love.

Sam’s life is on track. She has the perfect doctor fianc�, Jack (his strict routines are a good thing, really), a great job in Manhattan (unless they fire her), and is about to tour a wedding venue near her family’s Long Island beach house. Everything should go to plan, yet the minute she arrives, Sam senses something is off. Wyatt is here. Her Wyatt. But there’s no reason for a thirty-year-old engaged woman to feel panicked around the guy who broke her heart when she was seventeen. Right?

Yet being back at this beach, hearing notes from Wyatt’s guitar float across the night air from next door as if no time has passed–Sam’s memories come flooding back: the feel of Wyatt’s skin on hers, their nights in the treehouse, and the truth behind their split. Sam remembers who she used to be, and as Wyatt reenters her life their connection is as undeniable as it always was. She will have to make a choice.