When Mallory Blessing asks her son Link on her deathbed to call the phone number written on a note in her desk drawer, Link has no idea that Jake McCloud will pick up the phone. It's late summer 2020 and Jake's wife Ursula de Gournsey is a hot candidate in the presidential election. Link is sure there must have been a mistake somewhere. How does Mallory know Jake? Jump back to the wonderful year of 1993. Mallory has just inherited a cottage on the coast of Nantucket Island from her aunt. He allows his brother Cooper to have a bachelor party there. Cooper's college friend Jake McCloud also comes to the party. Jake and Mallory form a relationship that lasts for years—marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political career—until Mallory learns she is dying. The story of the book was inspired by the movie Next Year at the Same Time (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer). It is the story of an unusual love that knows only one season - summer.