55 pages • 1 hour read
Annabel MonaghanSame Time Next Summer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Contemporary Romance Tropes
Same Time Next Summer is a contemporary romance novel. The narrative employs the “forced proximity,” “childhood sweethearts,” and “second chance” tropes characteristic of the genre. In the forced proximity trope, the main characters find themselves in the same location on repeated occasions. Over time, their proximity compels them into an intimate dynamic. In the childhood sweethearts trope, two characters who fell in love in their youth rediscover their connection as adults. In the second chance trope, former lovers who believed their relationship was over find that renewing their love is possible. All these dynamics converge in Sam and Wyatt’s love story. They fell in love as teenagers on Long Island. When they end up back in the summer homes of their childhood as adults, they discover that they still have “very real feelings” for each other (292). At the same time, Annabel Monaghan reinvents these genre tropes by embedding more complex emotional and interpersonal dynamics into Sam and Wyatt’s story. She backgrounds their romance with the characters’ familial complications, artistic pursuits, and attempts to discover and claim their true identities. These dynamics subvert and deepen the more templated facets of contemporary romance novels.
Same Time Next Summer finds its place in conversation with other contemporary romance novels, including Carley Fortune’s novels This Summer Will Be Different, Meet Me at the Lake, and Every Summer After, K. L. Walther’s The Summer of Broken Rules, and Abby Jiminez’s Just for the Summer. Like Fortune’s, Walther’s, and Jiminez’s novels, Same Time Next Summer uses the classic summer romance as its inspiration and backdrop. Like her contemporaries, Monaghan explores the ways in which beachside settings and long, warm days might draw characters together and inspire intimacy between them.
Geographical Context: Long Island
Same Time Next Summer primarily takes place on Long Island, geographically situated to the east of the New York City borough of Manhattan. While the region is densely populated, it does not have the same architectural features or the fast-paced energy of Manhattan. Anthropological archaeologist Allison McGovern notes that on Long Island, “the landscape changes dramatically from the urban landscape of the metropolitan area to a suburban landscape that seems to spread out spatially the further east that you go” (McGovern, Allison. “Long Island: Understanding the Place and its People.” The Gotham Center for New York City History). The location also has more beachfront property and thus more access to natural settings than Manhattan or New York’s other boroughs. Long Island’s Gold Coast also famously “serves as the backdrop for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby” (“Facts About Long Island.” longisland.com).
In “A Conversation with Annabel Monaghan” found at the back of the source text, Monaghan says that when she thinks of “Long Island in the summer,” she thinks of “hydrangea growing like weeds and the dunes moving with the breeze on the beach” (293). Indeed, this affluent area of New York remains a popular summer destination because of its oceanic backdrop and open skyscapes. While Oak Shore is a fictional Long Island town, the trees, flowers, sands, and birds that Sam describes throughout the novel are characteristic of the real Long Island locale.
Monaghan uses the Long Island setting as a way to awaken her main characters’ sensory and emotional experiences. Because the novel is set in the summer months, Sam is able to enjoy the outdoors throughout her time on Long Island. She “walks through the dunes that give way to the sand and the ocean” and “the smell of the air and the rough feel of dried salt on [her] skin” compels her to engage with her surroundings and reconnect with her true self (293). New York City is easily accessible from Long Island, but Long Island is separated from the city by the Midtown Tunnel. The setting therefore feels physically set apart from Sam’s life in Manhattan. Because the setting doesn’t have the same bustling, metropolitan feel of the city, Sam is able to let go of her stressful life in Manhattan with Jack when she’s surrounded by Long Island’s beaches, plants, animals, and open air.
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