When his father died a couple of years prior, Sean lost it and had a big row with his grandfather, which he hasn't told anyone about, but which has kept him more-or -less away from the family's Snow Crystal Resort in Vermont.
But when the call comes that his Grandfather has been rushed to the hospital after collapsing with a possible heart attack, he drops everything and rushes home... not that he things it will do much good, plus he'll be stuck in a place he never loved as much as
Elise Philipe has made her life at Snow Crystal over the last eight years, adopting the O'Neil family as her own and forming deep connections to everyone there, specially Grandpa O'Neil, who is old and ornery and likes to do things his own way.
Having escaped from a bad situation years before with the help of Jackson O'Neil, Sean's twin brother, Elise is in no rush to ever leave Snow Crystal, the only place she has ever been happy since her mother died. And she can't quite understand why Sean keeps away, at least not at first.
But as the summer wears on and Sean sticks around, she begins to understand, even if she's not quite ready to share all of her secrets herself
Second Glance: Suddenly Last Summer was a lovely book, I really enjoyed it and I liked it more than I liked the previous book Sleigh Bells in the Snow, which to me felt very much like a set up book, plus I didn't like the Grandfather in that one.
In this one, the world of Snow Crystal is already more or less stablished so we spend less time in the whole setting things up part and now we are just expanding on the characters we met before... for the most part. There is this bit of the story that keeps getting brought up over and over and over - about how much the Grandfather, whose name eludes me right now, loves Snow Crystal and how much Sean's father hated running the business (But mostly the first part).
And, like, that was a big part of the plot of the first book, we already knew that, but even if we hadn't known, with the first two or three times they said it was enough to make a point, yet it was brought up almost every other chapter.
Other than that, I really enjoyed spending time with Sean and Elise and figuring out why they were they way they were. Sean hated feeling tied down because he saw what that did to his father; and Elise had gone through a really bad relationship in her early twenties and felt adrift since losing her mother, so for her Snow Crystal and belonging there was wonderful.
UK Cover
Aside from the romantic relationships, there is a lot of how important connection is in this book; Elise loves that she feels like part of the O'Neil family and that she has great friends in Kayla and Brenna and that they trust her and love her. Sean on the other hand feels the burden of his family history and expectations, but loves them to death anyway.
Bottom Line: Like I said, I enjoyed Suddenly Last Summer, it was a lovely contemporary Romance and I believed the relationship between Sean and Elise, its also a book about family and I really enjoyed spending more time with the characters from the previous book and I'm really looking forward to book three Maybe This Christmas.