See You Next Summer: A Happy Daze Novel: 1

Fourteen-year-old Willa Fairfax has been counting down to >Every June, her family packs the minivan in McLean, Virginia, stops at the same McDonald's outside Williamsburg, crosses through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, and arrives at Happy Daze - their bright yellow beach house tucked behind the dunes. There are rules to the summer: ocean check before unpacking, soft-serve from Pete's truck at seven, ghost crab hunts after dark, her dad's "best day yet" after dinner, and the guestbook >But the summer of 2003 feels different. Maybe it is the way Willa feels less like the careful girl she is at home and more like the barefoot version of herself who only exists at Happy Daze. Or maybe it is Cade Mercer - the local boy behind the counter at the Sandbridge Market, the one who knows the tides, fixes her crooked bike, calls her McLean, >Cade is not a summer visitor. He is Sandbridge - the quiet Back Bay before sunrise, the ghost crabs at Access 12, the ache of watching people leave when September comes. Willa knows routines, family traditions, and how to become whoever the room needs her to be. Together, over one summer that neither of them will forget, they learn what it means to belong to a place, to >But August always comes. Inspired by a true story and set against the golden haze of early-2000s summer - AIM away messages, burned CDs, disposable cameras, flip phones, Sun-In, and songs playing through open windows - See You Next Summer is a nostalgic young adult beach romance about the summers that shape us before we know they are >And when the towels are folded, the porch swing slows, the guestbook closes, and the drive home begins, Willa has to leave behind the house, the boy, and the summer that changed >Until one AIM message appears after Labor Day. A slow-burn coming-of-age first love story for readers who fell in love with The Summer I Turned Pretty - See You Next Summer is >Some summers do not end. They become part of you.