This was a nice romance read. Ended as expected. The characters were well written. Cassie and Fred met as young teens so weren't mature enough for a lasting relationship. They let other things get in their way. As many times as they reconnected, they also walked away from each other. Until they finally grew up and realized what was truly important. The relationships between Cassie and her sisters, Sophie and Charlotte, were something I could identify with. I enjoyed the book and would read more by this author.

I can definitely see this book being a hit this summer. It’s such a good romance, second chances story. It was slow at times, but I am glad I read it.

This is the first book that I've read from Lauren Bailey and I have to say I really enjoyed it.

When I saw the cover I loved it then I read the blurb and I was intrigued. Such a great read

Have you ever watched a friend involved with someone that you just know is wrong for them? Where they go back to each other over and over? This is exactly what is happening to Olivia and Fred in Summer After Summer.

Olivia lives in the Hamptons right on the ocean and spends her summers there getting tan and enjoying the beach. She meets a newcomer to the area, Fred, and sparks fly immediately.

The two begin a dance that honestly becomes exhausting. I am not going to lie, the angst of these two almost made me not finish the story. But, there were little nuggets dropped throughout the story that I wanted a resolution to and I’m glad I stuck with it.

This book reads a bit like teenage drama, which is fine. I just wish some of it could have been cut out in order to move the story along. Like, how many times can a couple break up and get back together??

Thank you so much to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Summer After Summer is a good fit for those seeking a heartwarming and introspective romance that explores second chances, family, and personal growth.

Solid debut novel with a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”. Liked the back & forth timelines but felt the second half of the story dragged a bit. Enjoyed the tennis elements & think this will be a fun summer read for lots of readers. Thanks for the advanced copy, NetGalley!

This was such a page turner I couldn't put it down, every detail and new information about their love story had me wanting more and more.
Some parts frustrated me, like how rarely the fmc stood up for herself when it came to her sisters being insufferable but she did show some growth. I kinda did guess the "plot twist" but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it any less.
I was rooting so hard for Fred and Olivia's love story, their relationship is truly the definition of right person wrong time except the wrong time was through out 20 years!!!!
Overall this was a fun emotional read and impressive for a debut.
Finally thank you Netgalley and Alcove Press for this ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Press for an ARC of Summer After Summer.

Plain and simple, the author made a lot of really odd choices throughout this book.

There were weird, inconsistent tenses, the switching between American and British vernacular, and an odd switching between relaxed and formal writing.

It was so distracting it kept me from really enjoying the story.

Not a winner for me!

Summer After Summer is an excellent book to read anytime of year! Olivia and Fred’s romance has you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I can’t believe this is Lauren, Bailey’s debut novel. I loved reading about the history of the Hamptons, the geography, but most of all the love story from Olivia‘s perspective. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to to read this, NetGalley!

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. I loved this book. It has everything that I want in a summer read. A beach house, past loves, alternating points of view.

A creative retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion set in the Hamptons. Olivia and Fred are in love from the beginning, yet can’t seem to shake the star-crossed nature of their relationship. Following their story over 20 years, and the one summer that brings them back to where it all began this roller-coaster romance contains all the marks of Persuasion while being an entirely enjoyable unique story of its own.

I loved this- a persuasion inspired second chance story with all the summer fling drama and upper class family tension *chef’s kiss* This book was super cinematic and it was so easy to just get sucked in to Olivia and Fred’s story! I loved seeing all the ways their timing wasn’t quite right until it finally was- the tension, the pining! It felt a little like a grown up The Summer I Turned Pretty meets Pineapple Street in all the best ways. I can’t wait for people to DEVOUR this when it’s out this summer!

Thank you, NetGalley, Lauren Bailey, and Alcove Press, for granting me access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved and adored this book! It's truly a masterpiece, and it's hard to believe that it's the author's debut novel! Lauren Bailey has crafted a wonderful, emotional, heartwarming, powerful, and beautifully written modern retelling of Jane Austen's classic "Persuasion." This book will tug at your heartstrings, so be sure to have your tissues handy!

The story follows Olivia as she returns to her family home in the Hamptons to help pack up the estate. The buyer turns out to be her first love, Fred, whom she met 20 years ago at the age of 16. Despite their complicated past and the timing never seeming right, Fred has always been the love of her life. As Olivia navigates her feelings and the complexities of their relationship, the reader is taken on a journey filled with first loves, fate, family, friendships, loss, hope, deception, heartbreak, courage, passion, tension, chemistry, and spice.

I was captivated from beginning to end! This delightful story is simply perfect. If you're a fan of Emily Henry, then you will love this book. I cannot recommend it enough! It deserves all the stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis (From NetGalley):

"A woman returns to her family's Hamptons beach house for a final time—and a final chance at the love she's lost before, in this contemporary retelling of Persuasion, perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Rebecca Serle.

Olivia Taylor’s marriage is in a death spiral when she agrees to come home to the Hamptons to help her father and sisters pack up the family estate. If it looks like she’s running away from her soon-to-be-ex Wes and New York City, well, she is. But someone has to take care of things, and that’s always been Olivia’s role in the family. After years of financial trouble, someone’s finally bailing them out with a huge offer to buy their beachfront property, which is a good thing, although it means losing the home she grew up in, where her mother died, and where she first met Fred, the love of her life.

It’s been five years since the last time things blew up between Olivia and Fred, but much longer since the first time. At this point, Olivia fears it was never meant to be, so there’s no reason to feel butterflies in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again. They’ve already tried, and tried again…and again…but she’s newly single, and she isn’t the same person she was the last time–and Fred has changed, too.

This time, things will be different. Maybe, just maybe, the fifth time’s the charm."

In conclusion, this book is an enjoyable romp in the sand, perfect for your summer reading list. You may lose track of time and get a burn, so wear your sunscreen and indulge in this absorbing story. Highly recommended!

Thank you NetGalley and Alcove for the ARC! Summer After Summer follows Olivia as she returns to her childhood home to help her father and sisters prepare the house for sale. Her marriage has been struggling and so this offers the perfect escape for Olivia,. When she gets to the house, however, she begins to doubt her choice as she discovers that the buyer of the house is none other than her first love, Fred. The story then alternates between the present and the past as we follow Olivia and Fred's first meeting and their love story as they reunite and separate every five years. Could this be the final chance for their love or are they destined to go their separate ways one final time? Summer After Summer is a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion and readers of both will pick up on parallel characters and storylines. This is a charming read, perfect for fans of second chance romance books.

Well that was an emotional rollercoaster! Good thing I love rollercoasters lol. This is a modern version of Jane Austin’s Persuasion. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I can’t do a full comparison. There are many similarities though and I like the modernization to present day. If you are unfamiliar with Persuasion, it’s a first-love and a second chance at love trope with a few twists.

I enjoyed reading this and I may re-read this in the future after re-reading Persuasion. I look forward to this author’s next book.

*Provided a DRC (digital review copy) from the publisher for review. All opinions are my own.

Read if you like:
💋 Tension and Longing
🌊 Beach Reads
📚 Persuasion Retellings
🥇First Loves

This book is a modern take on Persuasion and it was really well done! I love the summer vibes and beachy setting as that made it even better for an immersive second chance romance story for these first loves.

If you love tension, pining, and second chances I recommend this one!

Thanks so much to the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my review!

Thank you to Alcove Press and Lauren Bailey for my eARC copy via NetGalley.

Olivia is about to have the worst summer she's had. Her marriage is crumbling and she doesn't know where she's going to end up, her father is selling her childhood home that has been in their family for generations and she has to drop everything to help clear out the house, and she knows she is going to run into Fred. Fred was the love of her life, a force that drew her to him like a gravitational pull, but it's been five years after a huge blow up caused them to both go no-contact. Can she stand to see him again while the rest of her world crumbles around her?

OK, I'm going to start with the good-
I love love love a good young summer love breaking up with a future second-chance romance (Love and Other Words/Every Summer After, which are basically the same book but I digress...) and it feels like that is what the author was trying to accomplish with Summer After Summer. Bailey often did convey the puppy-love, youthful, this-is-forever type of feelings that typically come with these types of books - ones that make you remember the unbearable butterflies you'd get when you saw the person you were pining after in your teenage years.

I did feel like Fred was a pretty likable character despite him being a complete knucklehead, which I found infuriating because I didn't want to like him and yet he was a very sweet golden retriever-esque MMC. He was selfish as the book progressed, but his beginning flashbacks would temporarily redeem him until he ages and you realize he never dealt with his own shit and just kept repeating the same patterns over and over.

I thought the cocktail hour every day, where you never know who would show up and you were always expected to dress to impress was a funny concept, and I enjoyed how she used it to move the story line along.

Now for the things I did not enjoy -
Their on-again, off-again relationship was really pointless after the first breakup. Olivia gave Fred every opportunity to believe what she says/shows with her actions, and trust that she wasn't' going to leave him. I mean, every time he came in like a whirlwind and decided he wanted to be with her (honestly really just wanted to sleep with her if you want my honest opinion), she would welcome him back nearly without question. If that isn't enough proof of her affection for him, then he is an idiot and reallllllly needs to get therapy. Well both of them really need to get therapy. I understand Olivia loves him and that's definitely hard to overlook, but it was frustrating that she kept believing him over and over when historically he wasn't someone she should be trusting. The love bombing really took me out. Olivia wasn't very trustworthy either, her willingness to cheat on her fiancee is a biiiig red flag as well... Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, I guess they really do deserve each other.

Ashley having to apologize for sending Olivia's fiancee when she was pretty sure Olivia was going to cheat on him... Um that's what a decent person/friend should do. She told Olivia not to get back with Fred and reminded her that she was engaged, then didn't hear back and expected the worst was happening (which it would have). Olivia should have broken up with him, <i>then</i> got back together with Fred. She could have told Fred what she was feeling but that they couldn't go any further until she untangled herself from her engagement, but she definitely wasn't planning on doing that, they had too much chemistry to be alone together without something happening. Should she have been engaged to him? No. Was she happy? No. Regardless, that doesn't make being unfaithful any more acceptable.

The use of the phrase "summer after summer" throughout the book. Wayyyy too on the nose for me, towards the end they said it so much that I couldn't help giggling, it felt like satire.

The Scooby-Doo plot twist with Olivia's husband. It was obvious when he started asking about the money that he may not be there for altruistic reasons. I can get behind throwing some of that in there, maybe more like him loving her, but being selfish and a bit of a gold digger. But a secret plot where her sister's lover and her estranged husband are having an affair and are working together to defraud the family and run away together with the money? It was in the middle of the apex of the storyline, right when she realizes she wants to get back with Fred forever, and all of a sudden you're whiplashed into a whodunit. I think that entire portion of the book could have been removed and it wouldn't have had any impact, which proves it didn't really need to be there. I honestly would have given it more stars if it wasn't for this part of the story.

Overall, it was an easy book to get through, it did keep me entertained though I found myself cringing at most of the major plot points. I would recommend this to anyone who likes summer romances with second-chance themes, and who like a little drama in their reading.

I liked this book, but I cant say I loved it. It just went on too long. I didnt really have a connection with the characters either.

Reminding me of Carley Fortune, this book was lovingly crafted. I would have liked it more if it was shorter, or a quicker pace. A great summer read nonetheless.

This book had everything I could hope for in a summer beach read/second chance romance. I really enjoyed the concept of this book, and the alternating timelines. However, I struggled with the pacing of the book a bit, the character depth, and there were a few plot holes too.

I felt like I didn’t get enough of the FMC and MMC’s backstories, or really get to know who each of them were. There was a lot of back and forth, with significant gaps in time, and I was confused as to what transpired in that time away, or how each character had changed. Because of this, I found it a bit hard to connect with the characters.

I really liked the twist at the end, and thought this was a great debut novel!

Thanks to Netgalley and Alcove Press for the ARC!