Review: Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
This book stole my heart in the best way. I don’t know what I was expecting going in, but it completely swept me away. It was a “can’t put it down” type read. A “stay up past your bedtime, quietly sobbing into your pillow” kind of read. In all the best ways.
I’m no stranger to the summer read and wow, is this a summer read. Not because it’s easy or light but because it truly feels like those endless summer days when you’re young. How every feeling is so impossibly intense and HUGE as you’re discovering who you are, who you love, and where you belong. I’ll be thinking about this book for a very, very long time.
And bonus, it’s a Lake Read! It is written by a Canadian author and takes place in a small lake town north of Toronto. I could feel the sun soaking into my skin while I was reading.
Synopsis:
“They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.
Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.
For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.
When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.”
What I LIked:
Everything—I know, this is slightly obnoxious. But I ate this book UP. It pulled me into the story unapologetically and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. From the setting to the story, everything was chef’s kiss perfection when it comes to a summer romance for me.
The Tropes—Childhood friends to strangers to lovers/second chance romance?! GIVE IT TO ME LIKE CANDY. This was set up in dual timeline, from when our main characters meet at 13 to the funeral of the MMC’s mother when they are 30.
The Tone—I’m going to dub this a RomDram. It will make you FEEL. I swooned, I gasped, I ugly cried. I raged. But I also felt so deeply the emotions in this story.
The Imperfect Characters—These characters are not perfect. But who is in real life? I keep referring to this book as “raw” because that’s how I my heart felt when reading it. We see our characters struggle with trust, anxiety, lust, and communication (but not in the miscommunication trope kind of way). We see them make big mistakes. We see them hurt and cause hurt. I could relate so deeply to Percy’s desires to be wanted and the trouble that can cause.
What Didn’t Work:
One line that read as Fatphobic/Unnecessary—There’s a line where the FMC, Percy, says to another character, “Oh, now I see where your dates go: you fatten them up and then eat them dinner” (paraphrased) and it just didn’t feel necessary.
Character Authenticity: 5/5 Steam Rating: 2.5/5 Overall Rating: 5/5
Content Warnings:
Panic Attacks/Anxiety Disorder, Grief, Cancer, Death of a Parent, Infidelity