A second chance, friends to lovers, small town summer romance with all the feels? YES PLEASE. A stunning debut from Carley Fortune, this emotional love story blew me away. I loved the past and present timelines as well as the vivid descriptions. I felt I was at the lake house with Percy and Sam. Pick this up for a perfect summer read! Thank you so much to Berkley and Netgalley for my copy.

CW: cancer

This is a sweet & summery story about friendship, love, mistakes, and forgiveness. It's told in alternating time periods — during Percy and Sam's teenage years when they met and fell in love, and then 12 years after the end of high school, when a huge mistake drove them apart.

I enjoyed seeing their relationship develop over the course of six summers, with endearing childhood moments and angsty teen drama. I do feel like the resolution was rushed in the end, and I wish there had been more focus on them as adults working through their conflict.

The setting was amazing. A cottage by the water and lazy summer days made me nostalgic for my childhood family holidays. Lovely! Would recommend to fans of second chance romances. 3.75 stars.

Soooo GOOD! I’m beyond obsessed with this book and have been recommending it to everyone I know. The amount of sexual tension is just absolutely off the charts and I loved how vulnerable the characters were with one another. Absolutely amazing book.

I couldn’t stop reading this book. I stayed up until 1:45 devouring every last word. How is this her first novel?! If her second is anything close to it, I’ll be a reader of her work for life.

The friendship to love that grew between Percy and Sam was so magical and pure. The mystery of what happened to cause them to not speak for 12 years was such a smart way of keeping me burning through the pages.

I know plenty of readers have raved about this book lately and it deserves all the praise! I highly recommend picking it up this summer 💜

Thank you so much to @netgalley and @berkleypub for the arc!

This book ya’ll…Wow! If it is not on your summer TBR, you will want to add it now! Just trust me!

Alternating between present day and various summers years before, Every Summer After tells the coming-of-age story of Percy Fraser as she visits her family’s lakeside cottage in the Canadian bush. During her first summer at the lake at the age of thirteen, Percy meets the boys that live next door, Sam and Charlie Florek. Percy and Sam immediately become best friends and spend countless summers together as they grow up. The present day chapters reveal that Percy and Sam had a falling out years before, but now come face-to-face again after many years apart.

Nostalgic and heartbreaking, but also utterly captivating, Every Summer After will leave its mark on your heart. It is second chance romance perfection. I loved the dual timelines of seeing the back and forth of Percy, Sam, and Charlie as teens full of angst and immaturity and then as adults reeling from past mistakes and learning to move forward. It is truly a beautiful (but messy) story and left me with happy tears and hugging my Kindle.

Read if you like:
-Second chance/summer romances
-Nostalgia of childhood summers
-Lake life
-Small town settings
-Horror movie marathons
-Friendship bracelets

Thank you so much Berkley Romance and Netgalley for the gifted copy! All opinions are my own.

5 huge stars!!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Have you ever read a book and felt like it was almost physically painful to put it down and go on with the rest of your life?? This doesn't happen to me often, but it did while I was reading this book. Carley Fortune has written the ultimate perfect summer reading book, but I just know I'll be revisiting these characters in another season too.

Here are a few of many things to love about this book:

1) Two timelines - now and then...then being YA age/young love, now being over a decade later. This pace worked so well for me as a reader and I devoured every word.

2) An instantly perfect summer setting at a cabin on a lake in Canada - I loved the Canadian-ness in this book!!!

3) A feeling of nostalgia, an uncertainty about what happened in the "then" timeline, and beautifully written prose and relationship building moments that were swoonworthy

4) Themes of love, family, friendship, growing up, growing together and apart, and forgiveness. Percy and Sam and Charlie were just so special.

I absolutely loved this book so much that I had to run out and buy my own copy to have forever. Something about it reminded me of the final episode of Dawson's Creek, which I'll admit makes me cry just thinking about. It was so wonderful.

Well done, Carley on your debut novel!! I cannot wait to follow your writing career. 🤞

This was a super easy, summery book that didn't quite work for me. Sam and Percy are each other's first loves but they're torn apart before they start university. When a tragedy brings them back together 13 years later, they must find their way back to each other. The setup felt overdramatic to me and the initial conflict seemed unnecessary. What really threw me was what tore them apart and how easy it seemed to be forgiven. I didn't find it believable and had a bit of whiplash at how fast they resolved their conflict.

A perfect summer read, Every Summer After, is told in flashbacks against a current summer and a series of summers from the first point that Persephone meets the brothers in the cabin next to hers at the lakeside. She and the youngest, Sam, connect and forge a friendship immediately, a friendship that turns towards romance as they grow up, but without the maturity to connect well, they fall apart. Just what happened, and what comes next is the story to be uncovered in the present. Romantic and sexy, the characters are enjoyable to read and I found myself not wanting to put it down.

I love stories that go from the past to now. Going back and forth until you get to where the conflict happened. You get all the emotions slowly unraveling and you try to guess what it is and I usually guess the wrong thing or guess the right thing as it's happening so that doesn't count.

So I just finished and I totally guessed wrong and I have all the feels.

This had all the summer romance feels to it from age 13 to 30. A story of first love, heartaches, betrayals, absence, grief and second chances.

I just loved all 3 main characters it was mostly Sam and Percy (Persephone, P) but also Charlie.

I just have that warm new romance mixed with seasoned romance feel. There was a lot of pain not quite miscommunication but missed chances and not the right times.

But when you've met your soulmate at 13 how long will you wait for them?

This book is all over right now. Totally recommend! Def a summer read!

Read if you like:
🏖️ Second chance romance
🏖️ First love summer romance
🏖️ Being lake side

Thank you berkleypub and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

THIS BOOK WAS PERFECTION.

I had heard amazing things about this book and was so excited to read it. I love the friends-to-lovers-to-strangers-to-lovers trope. And this book just made that trope a million times more appealing.

The story was unique and so well developed. I adored the characters. The plot. Everything.

We are only 5 months through the year and I’ve found my favorite read so far: Every Summer After by @carleyfortune!

Where to start with this incredible romance/ summer lit book? Persephone spent every summer of her childhood at a lake in northern Ontario next to Sam and Charlie Florek. These boys were her best friends until it turns into more with Sam. Things are magical until that one moment when everything goes wrong. Years later, after a family death, she heads back to the lake where her life was change so many years ago.

This book is absolute perfection. It gets everything right: the feeling of isolation when moving to a new area, childhood friends made in no time, first love, long distance friendships and romance, the death of a parent, even sibling rivalry. I loved the relationship between Sam and Percy; it felt so genuine and real. I had to keep reading to find out more. I needed to know what the big conflict was that changed everyone. It was so well executed!


I can hardly believe this is a debut novel, but I’m going to need more from Carley immediately. I hope she’s working on new stuff! I would also love to shout out that Sam’s family restaurant serves Polish food and I would love to go to their restaurant. I would love to know what made the author decide to have them own a Pierogi restaurant! 🇵🇱

There’s a reason this is the book of the summer. I received a @netgalley copy and purchased a physical copy before I was even 100 pages in because I need a copy to keep on my shelves. Thank you to @berkleypub for my netgalley copy! Get your own today!

10 stars (5 doesn’t seem enough!)

Every Summer After is officially one of my favorite books! I can't believe that this is Carley Fortune's debut novel! After reading this she's an auto-buy author for me! 5 stars all around. Sam is my new book boyfriend.

Every now and then you just need a beautiful friends to lovers romance with all the swooning, young love, and angst. Every Summer After fit the bill and more. Sure, I figured out the "secret" almost from the start. After all, there are only so many things that it can be and if you read enough romances, you've run into them all. It's all about how it's handled, and this was done well and authentically. The characters are all likeable, the situations are believable, and the romance just fills your heart.

Thank you Berkley for the gifted copy.

I LOVED THIS BOOK. It sucked me in, broke me, and stitched me back together. I read it in less than 24 hours and absolutely loved every second.

I loved the format, which was alternating between summers at the cottage and the present. Not knowing what tore Sam and Percy apart when they were 18 kept me reading and when we finally found out, I was devastated. Devastated that it happened, and by the events that caused Percy to feel like that was what she wanted.

This is a book I will reread multiple times, and I think it would make a perfect movie or miniseries. I can not wait to see what this author writes next! I had the opportunity to hear her talk at the Berkley Summer Preview and her excitement about her book made me bump it up my TBR and I'm so glad I did.

ALL. THE. STARS. ALL of them.

Maybe more like 3.5, but both my high expectations for this book and the fact that it feels so eerily similar to a previous favorite of mine, Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren, really hurt my reading journey here. I felt like there was an imbalance with the then & now chapters heavily favoring the past when they were kids/teens for an adult romance, often felt like I was reading a YA book. The big reason why they no longer spoke felt both not big enough and all too predictable. I still think there is space for this book with certain readers and it is a decent way to spend a beach day just was not my favorite.

EVERY SUMMER AFTER by Carley Fortune

SUMMARY:
Percy's family has a lake cottage, where they summer and vacation on weekends and holidays. Next door neighbors Sam and Charlie are immediately welcoming and form a fast friendship with Percy. Sam and Percy are particularly close, maybe even the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. Then something happens that makes Percy run away and for Sam and Percy to not speak for over a decade. Twelve years later, Percy returns for Sam's and Charlie's moms funeral, and all that she left behind picks up right where it left off.

MY THOUGHTS:
This book was so cute 🥰. I loved it! It reminded me a lot of LOVE AND OTHER WORDS but I liked this book so much more.

I loved the then and now timelines, they flowed seamlessly and I hardly even noticed the transition. I was so sucked into the story.

THOSE FLOREK BOYS 😍 I loved Sam but I also really loved Charlie.

Sam and Percy had such sexual chemistry and the overall book had a good balance of steam and story. I love a second-chance romance and I thought this one was well written!

Well worth the hype. I might even buy myself a copy so that I have a physical one!

Persephone "Percy" Fraser spent her formative adolescent summers at her family's lake house in Barry's Bay, Ontario. She bonded with brothers Charlie and Sam Florek, who lived year-round in a neighboring house, and eventually Percy and Sam fell in love. But it's over a decade since she's been back to the lake, and more than a decade since she's seen or spoken to Sam when she gets a call that has her returning to Barry's Bay and offers her a shot at both healing and redemption.

This is a sparkling debut by an author who nails it on the first try. Alternating between past and present, Fortune conveys both the lovers' growth over the years as well as their complicated feelings for one another in the present day. This is sweeping, emotional, romantic, and unputdownable. Readers will gobble this one up. A stunner.

Every Summer After is a romance that takes place in duel timelines. Percy and Sam first meet the summer when they are 13 and the story jumps back and forth between their first meeting, and their most recent encounter when they are 30. As the story moves along, the gaps between when they met and present-day are filled in. Percy's family buys the lake cottage next to Sam's family and they spend each summer together, developing a relationship in the process.

I thought that the storyline here was sweet. It tackles first love and the sweetness that is love when you are so young. Sam and Percy are both delightful characters that are well-written. And the setting on the lake in the wilderness of Canada in the summer is primed for a perfect beach read.

What didn't work for me personally was the youth of the characters. I wanted more from the in-between, a large portion of the story takes place when they are 13-18 which, to me, made the novel feel more like a young adult novel. This one reminded me a lot of Christina Lauren's Love and Other Words and I think readers who enjoyed that one will enjoy this one!

Every Summer After will for sure end up as one of my favorite books of the year. I’ve been hesitating on writing this review because I don’t think my words will do it justice. This book is emotional, beautiful, passionate…I mean, you just get all the feels with this one. It’s a dual timeline story, which I love. The timeline in the past progresses, leading up to the big reveal. It’s got vibes of The Summer I Turned Pretty (Jenny Han) and Say You Still Love Me (K.A. Tucker), yet it’s unique as it’s own wonderful story. I had the opportunity to hear Carley Fortune talk about her book and read from her childhood journals during the “Booked with Berkley” summer sneak peek event. I knew after hearing her talk that I would enjoy this story and ended up reading it all in one night because I couldn’t put it down. I only got 4 hours of sleep that night, but it was worth it. I was captivated by the story of Percy and Sam. I highly recommend adding Every Summer After to your summer TBR list!
Thank you to @berkleyromance for a free digital ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
*Open door romance
*CW: cancer, grief, excessive drinking

I will be completely honest: When I was contacted about reviewing Every Summer After, I almost passed on the book. On the one hand, I thought I wouldn’t fully enjoy it (I’m not generally into small town settings or childhood sweetheart stories). On the other – and this was the bigger issue for me – I feared it would be too emotional; I was worried I’d cry my way through the whole book. For whatever reason, I decided to say yes to the book, and I’m so glad I did: I ended up absolutely loving it!

From the first chapter, Every Summer After is engrossing. It’s beautifully written, with characters that feel real and relatable. The story is already emotional and hinting at deeper waters, but it’s also gentle and reflective. The chapters go back and forth between present time, when Percy is 30, and the past, each one of the summers of her teenage years spent at her lakeside cottage. Whereas the present chapters feel contemplative and broken, the past chapters are a nostalgic glimpse of freer times.

This is not a young adult novel, yet half of the book does focus on Percy and Sam as teenagers, and those chapters reflect their age. They could be read as YA meant for older readers, but they work equally well as an adult looking back on life during those tumultuous years. The present chapters, with 30-year-old Percy, fit easily with the past chapters. It’s interesting how much Percy and Sam have changed, but also how much they’ve stayed the same.

During their first summers together, Percy and Sam develop a sweet friendship. I loved watching them grow such a strong bond and seeing how much they trusted each other. For example, Percy likes to write horror stories, and she only shows them to her two closest friends: Sam and Delilah. But Sam and Percy also push each other to grow, too, like with Percy getting so good at swimming. Their friendship feels genuine and completely real, and its limitation to summer and winter breaks gives it an insular quality.

Side note, but one of my favorite details here is Percy’s love of horror. Watching horror movies, writing scary stories – she’s all about spooky vibes. As a horror fan myself, I loved finally reading a book where the girl is into horror. I wish I could read Percy’s stories! Alas, I’ll have to follow her and Sam’s lead and watch some classic films instead.

Percy and Sam eventually developing crushes on each other also felt realistic – especially with how they went about communicating their secret feelings with each other. This romantic relationship is one between two naive teenagers, and it the storytelling perfectly captures that innocence.

Throughout the book, I felt for the characters, especially our leading couple. They feel like people I could have known when I was in middle school and high school. Even as adults, they seem broken but kind. I particularly liked the discussions around mental health, panic attacks, and grief.

There is a mystery surrounding why Sam and Percy broke up, and at a certain point, I guessed what the issue would turn out to be. I’d hoped I would be wrong, but alas, I was finally proven right about 85% of the way into the book. Up until this point, Every Summer After was a 5-star book. But I wasn’t a big fan of the issue and its quick resolution.

Beyond that, though, I did love nearly everything else about the novel. Despite myself, I enjoyed getting to know this small town north of Toronto. (I grew up in a small town and, like Sam, I always wanted to escape to somewhere more cosmopolitan. Small towns don’t usually hold the kind of romantic appeal for me that they might for others.) The summers by the lake truly sound idilic and innocent, and I’d love to spend some time in a place like that.

Every Summer After is a quick, sweet, and emotional read. It’s not utterly heart-wrenching, but it does feel nostalgic and may inspire a few tears. It’s a gentle but moving novel and a delightful debut. I already look forward to reading more from Carley Fortune.