Same Time Next Summer

Sam Holloway’s trip back to Long Island catalyzes her need to grapple with her past and present relationships. Her return to her family’s beach house at the start of novel serves as the inciting incident of the narrative. Sam hasn’t spent a summer with her family and Long Island community in 14 years. Therefore, “[c]oming home feels like tiptoeing through a minefield” (28), as Sam isn’t sure how to reconcile who she’s become with who she used to be. She’s convinced herself that her life in Manhattan with Jack is her true life and her relationships with the Oak Shore townspeople, her sister Grace, her brother Travis, and her parents are tangential. However, once she spends the week in Long Island, she finds herself comparing these familial and communal relationships with her relationships in the city, grappling with her choices and happiness in ways she hasn’t before. The narrative’s attention to Sam’s internal state throughout the novel illustrates the ways in which encountering one’s past as an adult compels the individual into self-reflection.

Annabel Monaghan emphasizes the tension Sam feels between her relationships with Jack and Wyatt as the central conflict of the novel, complicating how she sees herself and her future.