Summer lovin', having a blast / Summer lovin', happened so fast... Sam's first love broke her heart. When they were teenagers, spending summers next door to each other in cottages on Long Island, Sam and Wyatt were inseparable. Especially those last few summers, when childhood friendship turned into young love. Now, fourteen years later, Sam doesn't even like to go to the family beach cottage, because it brings back too many hurtful memories of the way it ended between her and Wyatt. But now Jack, her fiancé, wants to go there to check out possible wedding venues, and Sam hopes that she can put her old ghosts to bed. What she doesn't expect is to find Wyatt, who left for California years ago, back in the house next door. Is Sam's carefully constructed safe existence about to crumble like a sandcastle?

Of course it is. This is a perfectly adequate romance, but there are no surprises here. Monaghan has written Jack as so blatantly unlikable that it's obvious that Sam's not going to end up with him, in the same way that it's obvious that Wyatt is not some washed-up surfer bum/gas station mechanic, as Sam's whole family seems happy to assume. (A quick Google search could have cleared up so much, but the reason given for not doing one was pretty flimsy.) The summer beach house setting is well-written, and the interactions between Sam and Wyatt are believable. Recommended for romance fans, but not very picky ones. ( )

Enjoyable, but maybe I would have preferred the real book to the audio version. Sam, the main character comes off extra whiny via audio. Slightly predictable, but still fun. I’ll keep reading Annabel Monaghan, but I enjoyed “Nora Goes Off Script” better than this one. ( )

"Turn carefree into careful; bandage up your heart and double check the adhesive"

Inside of me, there are two Sams. There is the Sam who thinks it's nonsense to only need a thread of common experiences and youth love to pick up right where you left off and who would think this reads as a stuck-in-the-past-obsession.

"It's strange to think something had disintegrated to find out it has not"

There's another Sam though, and she's the one who dominates my feelings about this book. It's the Sam who definitely had a Wyatt (who scoffed say the first line of an author's note, cause baby even if Wyatt ain't real, he's real or you could not have committed to the way you wrote the all out get each other, first love never ever gonna be just friends or over you)

The first Sam would say I didn't have trouble with the way this was executed and Annabel Monaghan is an author who will rise to the occasion - because this is all true even if that brain-driven Sam is like UGH

BUT the second Sam read this and I love them and I love Wyatt and I'm obsessed with their complete feeling of being in sync and the fact that they have no boundaries at all. And I really enjoyed the way she executed this even with Jack which is not normal for me, I think it's hilarious he was a dermatologist...because beach.

Which Sam should you listen to? I don't know, honestly. Both versions have a great cast and believe in choosing- and that's one thing this book did exactly right.

"And I like this. I like knowing that it wasn't some act of fate or the draw of a washed-up tennis player that brought Wyatt back here to me. He chose me and got on a plane." ( )

Since the character wasn't a mom this book didn't have the magical "real mom" talk that Nora had which made it less unique. It was good and the twists were interesting but more typical summer bookish. ( )

I LOVED this book!! If you loved "Every Summer After" by Carley Fortune as I did, you'll love this one as well! It has very similar vibes, and I knew it would be a 5* read for me from very early on.

Here are some differences between this book and ESA:
- There's a TREEHOUSE in this one!!! (I've always loved treehouses, despite never actually having one.)
- It's based in the USA rather than Canada (One of the many reasons I love Carley Fortunes books - a rare Canadian setting!)
- They swim in an ocean rather than a lake.
- The conflict made a lot more sense to me than ESA

I do wonder why they chose this title, rather than "Meet Me at the Beach" which is said a few times throughout the book, but I'm happy with this title too.

I did kind of have to "just go with it" and suspend reality a bit for one part which I really don't think would happen in real life, but it was such a great summer read that makes up for it! ( )