See You Next Summer: A Happy Daze Novel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181303843)

Fourteen-year-old Willa Fairfax has been counting down to
Sandbridge for as long as she can remember.

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
waiting on the entry table to hold another year of memories.

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,
and notices things Willa is not ready to admit.

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
another person, and to the truest version of yourself.

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
shaping us.

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
everything.

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
Book One of the Happy Daze series by W. S. Phinlo.

Some summers do not end. They become part of you.

Author: W. S. Phinlo
ISBN-13: 9798181303843
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 06/12/2026
Pages: 186
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.56lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.40d