Annabel Monaghan’s adult novel Summer Romance (2024) is a best-selling contemporary romance set in the suburbs of New York City and written in first-person perspective from the point of view of the protagonist, Ali. Tracing 38-year-old Ali’s experiences over a single summer, the novel explores themes related to autonomy, healing, and balance.

Two years after her mom dies and one year after her husband, Pete, leaves her, Ali is struggling to manage her life as a single mother of three. She organizes other people’s houses for a living but can’t find the energy to clean up her own or even get out of her pajamas. With the encouragement of her best friend, Frannie, Ali finalizes her divorce from Pete and starts taking care of herself again. This new era of her life becomes even more exciting when she meets and develops feelings for another man and resolves to be the woman she once imagined herself becoming. Throughout the summer, she strives to rediscover her authentic identity, engage with her kids’ lives, and free herself from grief and sorrow.

This guide refers to the 2024 G.P. Putnam’s Sons paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel includes references to and descriptions of miscarriage, death, and emotional abuse.

Plot Summary

The novel opens at the start of summer in Beechwood, New York, a suburb of New York City. Protagonist Ali is 38 years old and struggling to manage her life as a newly single mother, a professional organizer, and a friend. Two years earlier, Ali’s mother, Nancy (or Fancy), died, and Ali lost her closest confidante. One year ago, Ali’s husband of over a decade, Pete, left her and their three kids, Greer, Iris, and Cliffy. Ali is still living in the house she and Pete bought together when they left Manhattan to create a life in Beechwood after Ali got pregnant with Greer. She’s running her organizational business part-time, helping her childhood best friend keep the books at her restaurant, Hogan Diner, and trying to heal from her mother’s passing.

One day, Ali decides to pursue formal divorce proceedings with Pete. She signs her kids up for camp, takes off her wedding band, and dons pants for the first time in months. She even gets up the courage to walk her dog Ferris at the dog park, suddenly okay with being out in public and interacting with people. While there, she runs into a handsome man named Ethan and soon agrees to go on a date with him. Their outing reminds Ali what it’s like to be single, and in her private conversations with her late mom in her car, she talks about her new crush.

At a dinner with her friend Frannie’s family, Ali learns that Ethan is Frannie’s younger brother, Scooter. She’s surprised at how much he has changed and the man he’s become. That evening, Ethan and Frannie’s parents announce that they’re moving to Florida and giving Frannie the diner and Ethan their house. Ethan thus decides to spend the summer in Beechwood cleaning out the house and preparing to put it on the market. He and Ali soon make an agreement that she’ll help him with the house project if he helps with her marriage dissolution mediation process. Ethan once practiced corporate law in Manhattan but has since opened a private practice in Devon, Massachusetts, where he lives full-time. He’s proud of his happy, healthy, and balanced life in Devon.

While Ali is going through mediation with Pete and getting to know Ethan, she reflects on her past and present life. While Ethan returns to Devon for a few days to work with a client, she cleans up her house. Throughout this process, she talks to Fancy about everything she’s been going through. Suddenly, Ali realizes that she not only let Pete put her down but also let Fancy’s expectations of her life limit what she wanted and control how she acted.

Meanwhile, Ali and Ethan fall in love. He listens to Ali and supports her. She respects him and loves the things that bring him happiness. However, when Ali realizes that the summer is ending and Ethan will be selling his parents’ house and returning to Devon, she despairs. Afraid to compromise Ethan’s life and disappoint her children, she ends the relationship.

Ali soon has a revelation about what transpired between her and Ethan. She realizes that she shouldn’t have given up on their relationship so easily. She and Ethan reunite and make amends. He reveals that he has decided to move to Beechwood after all because his life in Devon feels empty without Ali. He buys the house next door to Ali, and they gradually begin to merge their lives.