The boy next door used to know everything about Shannon Olivier. Cody Pike knew her favorite winter drink, the stories she hid in her notebooks, the childhood traditions nobody else would remember, and all the tiny pieces of her life that once made their friendship feel permanent. For most of Shannon's childhood, Cody was simply there, woven so completely into her world that she never imagined there would come a time when they barely knew how to talk to each other. Then they grew up. Cody left for college, Shannon built a life of her own, and somewhere between different friends, missed summers, and conversations that became less frequent, they quietly became strangers. When their families surprise them with a two-week Christmas trip to White Pine Lake, Shannon expects awkward dinners, polite conversation, and plenty of opportunities to stay out of Cody's way. Instead, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, crowded family dinners, Christmas markets, ice skating, old photographs, and traditions neither of them has forgotten, being together begins to feel surprisingly easy again. Cody still remembers things Shannon assumed time had erased, but the closer they become, the more she realizes she is not simply rediscovering the boy she grew up with. Cody has changed during the years they spent apart, and so has she. Learning who he is now begins to feel just as important as remembering who he used to be. Unfortunately, there is one very real complication waiting outside all that nostalgia. Cody has a girlfriend. When she arrives at White Pine, Shannon is forced to confront feelings she has spent years dismissing while Cody begins questioning parts of his own life that once seemed certain. What starts as an attempt to recover an old friendship slowly becomes something far more complicated, because finding their way back to each other may be easy compared with deciding what they are willing to risk once they get there. When the Sun Sleeps is a warm, slow-burn contemporary romance about childhood best friends, first loves that never quite disappeared, growing apart, finding each other again, and realizing that sometimes the person who feels most like home is someone you have to learn all over again.
