Ten years ago, Percy lost her best friend and true love. Since that day, she's been trying to fill the Sam-sized hole in her life. When Percy gets news that Sam's mother has passed away--someone Percy considered a second mother--she makes the journey back to Barry's Bay, where she spent several summers growing up, in more ways than one, with Sam at their neighboring lake houses. When Percy comes face-to-face with Sam, her past comes rushing back, along with the memories and the guilt that haunt her every day. The author alternates between present time and the past--from the first summer Percy and Sam met and each summer after until their dramatic breakup. It is a well-told story of lost love, growing up, and forgiveness. I enjoyed the story immensely and had a hard time putting it down!

Can you find your soulmate when you're 13? Persephone and Sam met when Percy's family moved into the lake house next door to Sam, for the summer. From then they were inseparable. Best friends growing up together, summer by summer. Until something broke them.

A decade later, Percy gets a call to come back to town for the funeral of Sam's mother. It brings all the old feelings to the surface, along with some secrets Percy would rather stay hidden.

The story moves between the current day and the past, and because we essentially get to see both characters grow up it really feels like you know them intimately. The main characters, but also the supporting characters, were written so wonderfully that you'll swear you do know them off the pages of the book. That also means you'll be heartbroken when you turn the last page and they are gone from your life.

I won't tell you too much about what happens in the story, because there is a bit of mystery as to why they're no longer friends and I don't want to spoil it. I'll just say that it's a beautiful, and moving story that you're going to want to pick up if you haven't already!

When it comes to summer, I am a sucker for books with the word summer in the title. I am also a sucker for books that have all the hype. Right now, Every Summer After by Carley Fortune seems to be hyped up on my FYP on tiktok. And so, I was a goner when it came to reading this book. Every Summer After follows Percy Fraser, whose parents have bought a cabin on Barry’s Bay when she was a preteen. Turns out the cabin is next door to two brothers — Charlie and Sam Florek. Their mother owns a restaurant in town that serves pierogies. Flash forward to the future and Percy has not been to Barry’s Bay in years. She’s living her life in Toronto with a swanky apartment and a string of boyfriends. She hasn’t spoken to Sam, her first love and former best friend, in years. That is, until Charlie calls her to let her know their mom has died. And so, Percy returns to Barry’s Bay for the funeral and to reunite with Sam — as well as face the mistake she made many years ago.

Every Summer After delivered exactly what I expected. I do have to say — I think the comparisons to The Summer I Turned Pretty are merited. While I prefered Han’s trilogy, Fortune’s debut was no slouch. Percy feels real. She’s far from perfect and has made some big mistakes. However, there’s a way through and I appreciate that. Also, I loved reading the different summers and progressions through her relationship with Sam. I did like the past summer parts better than present day. The pacing of this book was slightly slower than I anticipated, but I have no complaints. This was a superb summer read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Clearly I loved this one! I loved the characters and while I figured some things would occur, I enjoyed the way they played out. This is a great summer read, a pretty quick one too.

I’d be excited to see these characters again. While I loved the main characters, there were some smaller characters I’d love to see more of later on.

How do you properly write a review for a book that feels like it captured your whole heart and soul? This book hit just so close to home for so many reasons. I flipped between relating so much to Sam, then Percy, and back while I read Every Summer After. I can't believe this book is a debut, Carley Fortune clearly knows her way with words and how to create an incredibly gorgeous story full of all the emotions - betrayal, longing, secrets, deep rooted grief and pure love. I adore second chance love stories, then mix it with a first love second chance.. you've got me hooked.

Percy was such a relatable character in so many ways. Sam was such an old, lovable soul. Charlie was.. Charlie in the best way. These characters were just incredible and I dream of being their friend. While this book follows a typical romance novels path, it felt so much more real, even if it was fairly obvious what was coming, it still hit the mark and left me absolutely sobbing so many times.

I could spend my entire day telling you about this book and how gorgeous it is - I mean it's set in cottage country in Ontario - but I'll save my time and tell you to just go read this Book of the Summer. Go, now!

Fortune's debut has so much heart and nostalgia. This coming-of-age story set in a lake town in Canada is the perfect summer read that transports you back to what it feels like to be a teenager experiencing your first love and the heartbreak and lingering "what-if's" it can cause well beyond and even into adulthood. This was a beautiful novel.

I still can’t believe EVERY SUMMER AFTER by Carley Fortune is a debut! She broke my heart over and over again. Carley had me feeling like I was sitting on the dock, feet dangling in the water, and giggling at something silly that Sam has said. Percy and Sam connected right away and spent their childhood and tween years practically attached at the hip, until they didnt. Throughout the whole story the reader is trying to figure out what drove them apart and it is truly heart breaking.

Every reader needs to put EVERY SUMMER AFTER on their TBR pile right now if they haven’t read it already. This story made me an instant fan of Carley Fortune and I’m so excited to see what she writes next. Her words put you right there in the middle of all the action to the point where you can actually feel the pain and heartache that Percy and Sam are going through. Carley will also have the reader craving perogies like never before.

The bond that Percy and Sam share is innocent and so lovely, Carley Fortune’s words making the reader truly care about all they are going through. Even though they only see each other when Percy’s family goes to their summer cabin each summer, their bond is very tight. Their story is told in alternating chapters of past and present. The present has Percy back at the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral. Keep the tissues close by when all of this is going down because there will be tears. Many tears!😥 EVERY SUMMER AFTER gave me all the feels, happy and sad, and I really loved every minute of it. Do yourself a favor and grab your copy now!


I received a complimentary copy of this book from Berkley through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Sometimes you don't realize you need a book to help you remember who you were when you were young.

For me, <i>Every Summer After</i> is that book.

This romance novel jumps back and forth between Persephone's past and present - the past, in which she meets a boy and has some very incredible summers, and the present, in which she and that boy have not spoke in so long, yet they come crashing back to each other.

I was drawn into this book for so many reasons, mostly because past Persephone feels so much like me. Like Persephone, I went through a hard time with friends when I was young, I loved scary movies and making friendship bracelets, stuck onto the knee of my jeans while I turned the embroidery floss into something beautiful. Like Persephone, I used to go to a cabin too, although there was no cute boy next door.

Nonetheless, this novel pulled me right back into that world. And I never wanted to leave.

It's incredibly hard to believe that this is Carley Fortune's first novel, because the way she wove this story had me drowning in it, never wanting to come up for breath. I read it so quickly, devouring the pages. And yet I wanted to slow down, because I really didn't want to say goodbye.

This coming of age story will pull at your heartstrings, and no matter your upbringing, it'll make you wish for simpler times.

I can only hope that Ms. Fortune writes fast, because I need more of her words. I need all of her words.

In a nutshell, Every Summer After is the story of young love. Percy and Sam meet in their teens at the lake where Percy’s family spends their summers and Sam lives year round. They become best friends and slowly their love for one another builds. Slowly as in summer after summer.

There’s also a present day storyline where Percy is visiting the lake because Sam’s mother has passed away. There’s a big secret about why she and Sam did not work out 10 years earlier, and only Percy knows why.

Just as their past relationship is relayed as becoming more intimate, the present storyline also progresses in the same way.

Every Summer After will have you remembering those butterflies of young, innocent first love. It also shows how just one decision can change the course of one’s life, but at the same time, time can heal.

My favorite aspect of the story other than its high readability is the way Carley Fortune has drawn these characters, especially Percy and Sam. They are fallible but with huge hearts. It was refreshing to have a male main character who is sensitive, loving, and steadfast. I bought into his best friendship with Percy. I also loved the way mental health was highlighted. I could relate to Percy’s anxiety and how it affected her decision-making.

Overall, this is a nostalgic, steamy story of summer love, family, and friendship, and I’m so grateful I read it.

I received a gifted ecopy from the publisher, but I also purchased a physical copy for my shelf.

I won't lie, this one didn't work for me like I thought it would. It was eerily similar to Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (one of my all time favorite books) and I couldn't seem to stop comparing the two books while reading, which definitely impacted the reading experience. If someone hadn't read Love and Other Words before picking this one up, I could see them probably really enjoying it.

Take the vibes of the summer i turned pretty (summer, boys you grew up with, a Susannah type motherly figure) + the plot of love and other words (childhood best friends to strangers to lovers, past/present chapters, bought a house next door and would visit every so often) and you’ll get Every Summer After by Carley Fortune! We go back and forth between the past and present and follow Percy and pretty much lays out her entire relationship with Sam. We know they haven’t seen each other for 12 years and the more we read, the closer we are to finding out why they stopped talking. I felt like these characters were very likeable and the overall feeling of the book was a nice vibe. I’m always up for a summer romance, especially one that is friends to lovers. Something about friends to lovers just does it for me! The thing about childhood friends to strangers to lovers is that you can usually expect some sort of big miscommunication. Like “oh if they would’ve talked, they would’ve fixed this asap” but here’s where my thoughts get interesting. I feel like what happened justified WHY they didn’t talk for so long. I think it’s a huge thing and not something that would’ve been resolved with one conversation. That being said, I didn’t necessarily enjoyed what happened, but I felt like it made sense for the overall plot of the story. Some people will hate what happened but I personally felt like it fit with the flow of the story, so it didn’t negatively affect my feelings. On top of that, I loved a lot of the side characters and just the vibe of the book in general. It felt so comforting to read and I honestly just had a great time reading! I love the idea of first love and always finding your way back to ur person! I also found myself to really enjoy the friendship Percy had with Delilah! The ONLY thing I would change is the last sentence in the epilogue bc I hate when that happens, iykyk. overall I think this is something everyone should this summer! Also i would like to add: Justice for Mason lol he is the equivalent to cam from tsitp

I feel like this book was a very solid 3.5 stars for me. This has a premise that always works for me, two people meeting in childhood and sharing so many memories over the years as they meet again and again over summer vacations and then told in dual timeline between flashbacks and present-day. I can think of quite a few books that do this trope/set-up as well. While I always feel kinda meh or a certain way about what keeps them apart in the past, I do always come back for this trope because it does have two of my favorite things: childhood friends to lovers and second chance!

Ok so onto this story, Persephone first meets Sam and his brother Charlie when she’s 13. From Toronto, Persephone and her parents are vacationing at their new summer house. Sam is 13 too and his brother Charlie 15, they actually live there year-round with their single mom who runs a restaurant/tavern in town. Over the years we get lots and lots of flashbacks between Sam, Charlie and Persephone. In present day, it’s 17-years later and Persephone hasn’t seen the brothers in years. Now 30 and a magazine editor, Persephone gets a call one day from Charlie letting her know his and Sam’s mom passed away and they want her at the funeral/wake.

Most of the story is told in the flashbacks, with barely a weekend of time spent in present-day. I did feel like what kept Persephone and Sam apart wasn’t my favorite. I did want more from the romance as well, for the most part they just felt like best friends growing up…which I get, they didn’t start to feel those feels for one another until they start maturing. But even then Sam was kinda meh to me of why he kept her away from him and kinda of just always assumed they were end game so it didn’t matter how he acted/what he did before that. But again this premise of the story just always pulls me in so I liked it too.

This is a must-read for the summer. I think this might be the perfect summer novel, with how I felt I was living in Canada and swimming at Barry's Bay. I loved the story that Percy had with the Florek boys and wanted to know more about Sam and Charlie with each turning page.

I've found that it doesn't have to be summer to recommend the perfect beach read -- readers love them all year round, and this is a great one. Persephone returns home for a funeral, and gets swept up in the past she left behind. I look forward to recommending this title.

Thank you Berkley for my gifted review copy of Every Summer After by Carley Fortune.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the summer. A friends to lovers type of romance. Time jumps from the past to the present. Grief. We know I love a love story with a grief element. It had all the elements that usually work for me.

It started off strong. There's a hook. Something happened between Sam & Percy. They haven't spoken in years, but they're brought back together by a tragic event. Percy heads back to Barry's Bay - to face Sam and face her past.

I liked Percy fine. She's complicated, and somewhat detached from emotion. We see her face the emotional return to where she spent her summers and spent so much time with Sam.

BUT...the TWIST! The author teases it from the get go. What happened between these lovers that has kept them apart for all these years.

The setting is idyllic, cute and I can picture it even now. The author's writing is easy to follow and I breezed through the pages.

BUT,,,the TWIST. I guessed it very early on I dreaded it. I hoped it wasn't true, and it was. It left me angry and frustrated. For me, the ending wrapped up and kind of mashed things together rather than really processing them. It just didn't work for me.

I am Kind of Into This book. I enjoyed it enough that I would pick up Carley's next book in a heartbeat.

Told in alternating present and past timelines, Every Summer After is the story of Percy and Sam.
We first meet Percy (or Persephone, as she is now known), at age 30. While she outwardly seems to have it all together, internally she is still dealing with the after effects of the implosion of her relationship with Sam, the love of her life, 12 years ago. Sam Florek was 'the boy next door' in the small, sleepy town where Percy and her parents spent their summers. Over the course of 6 summers, we see Percy and Sam's relationship evolve from friendship at age 13 to love. Unfortunately Percy makes an awful mistake (the details of which are not revealed to the reader until about 80% in) that ends the relationship and causes Sam to to cut her out of his life completely. When Sam's brother, Charlie reaches out to Percy with some sad news, she decides she needs to return to Barry's Bay, and hopefully make things right with Sam.

With this book you get two for the price of one: a YA novel within a sexy adult romance. Since I love both genres, this was a hit for me. The story takes place over the course of several summers, which makes it a perfect summer/beach read. Honestly, I was captivated for the first half of the book, even staying up until 2 AM because I just didn't want to stop reading. Unfortunately it lost a bit of steam in the second half. The pacing seemed to be a bit off, dragging out the events of some of the 'past" chapters and skimming over the events of some of the "now" chapters. Also, I reached a point where I began to question if I even liked Percy. It's important to want to see your heroine get her happy ending, but I found myself thinking (after finally finding out what the big 'mistake' was) that I didn't necessarily think that she deserved her HEA. I also had a hard time wrapping my head around some of her actions (particularly with regards to the mistake) they just seemed out of character to me.

Overall, despite the flaws, this was still a good summer read, and I would definitely read more by this author.

If you're like me, you sometimes get. turned off by books you frequently see popup on your feed as five star ratings, but let me tell you, this book is worth every single star! Carley Fortune hats off to you! Every Summer After lives up to the hype. I started and just couldn't bring myself to put it down. I instantly fell in love with these complicated characters. Time heals, right? Perhaps that's what we like to tell ourselves. Some scars remains and some wounds don't heal. They fester and over time they grow bigger and bigger as we have time to think about them.

Persephone may be living what looks like the glam life in a trendy apartment, walking to work (and everywhere she goes), and going out, but under the surface she's still carrying burdens from her youth. Primarily, she can't get over Sam Florek, the boy she fell in love with and hasn't managed to get over. When she receives an unexpected phone call notifying her of the passing of Sam's mom, Percy knows she has to go back. It's only right.

The sparks fly between Percy and Sam even years later. Older, but perhaps not wiser. These two are forced to confront what happened all those summers ago that led to their estrangement. My one frustration with this book is just how much both of them beat themselves up. They were teenagers and while I recognize actions have consequences, some of the things they harp on about themselves annoy me. I found myself wanting to shake them both over and over, but I'm willing to say it's because I was that invested in these two finding their way back to one another.

Pick this book up. Find friendship. Fall in love. Tumble painfully through the woes of loving so hard it hurts. Forgive. Grow and most importantly, reminisce on your own experiences and the relatability of these two. It's worth every single moment of the rollercoaster ride.

This will probably be one of my best books of the year. Definitely in my top ten that is for sure. I wasn't a big fan of Charlie that's for sure and the ending made me crazy with everyone just being best friends, but, man this was a great book!

Every Summer After is a contemporary romance explores friendship, betrayal, secrets, and grief. The author addresses several subjects: death of a parent, cancer, infidelity. I initially heard of this book during the @berkleyromance influence event back in April. I was hesitant to pick it up because of all the hype I saw on bookstagram, but once I saw Colleen Hoover rave about Every Summer After, I knew I had to pick it up. Going in, I heard that this contemporary romance is great for romance readers who love Emily Henry and CLo’s Love and Other Words. As I was reading Every Summer After, I realized that I kept comparing the storyline to Love and Other Words as it seemed way to similar. I enjoyed more of the flashbacks than the present day. I felt that the present day barely moved since it was only the span of five days or so. I really liked that book was solely told Percy’s perspective and loved her character in the flashbacks. The writing style captivated me since the beginning. The part that really irritated me was the way the big twist was handled and that the ending was so rushed which knocked it from a 5 to 3.5 star read for me (rounded to 4 stars on GoodReads).

I have mixed feelings about this book, Did I enjoy it as I read it? Yes (until the end, which was super rushed and featured a reveal I was not a fan of.) At the same time, the uncanny similarities to Love and Other Words were very distracting during the reading experience.