Summer and the City Summer and the City Summer and the City is a young-adult novel written by Candace Bushnell. The sequel to "The Carrie Diaries" and the prequel to "Sex and the City", it was first released as a hardcover on April 26, 2011. Picking up where "The Carrie Diaries" left off, seventeen-year-old Carrie Bradshaw has left her hometown and treks to New York City. Set during the summer before her freshman year at Brown, Carrie learns to navigate her way through the Big Apple, takes a writing class at The New School, and even pursues a relationship with an older man. Joining
Sex and the City Noth), a prominent businessman and an aficionado of jazz and cigars whose real name is revealed in the final episode (Season 6, Episode 8) to be John James Preston, in a tumultuous, on-and-off-again relationship. (In a running joke, whenever Carrie is about to introduce Mr. Big on-camera to another character, she is interrupted before she can say his name.) He is the reason for many of Carrie's breakdowns as he never seems ready to fully commit to her. He is once-divorced by the time the series opens. Carrie and Big break up when he leaves New York for a work