I really enjoyed Every Summer After! I read it in about 3-4 days (I read the majority over 2 days) which is quick for me. Second chance romances are usually hit and miss with me, but even though their separation period was long, I felt Percy and Sam's "before" period was significant enough that I could realistically get on board with these two still holding on to feelings after all these years.

The side characters were pretty good in the book too. In particular, Percy's friend Delilah who had an unexpected character arc and massive character growth, which I really enjoyed.

Every Summer After has a great good sense of place, and it had me wanting to visit Barry's Bay myself (yes, I even looked up cabin rentals). I think Percy and Sam still have a lot to work through, but I'm glad that the book made that clear too – mentioning disagreements and bad days in the last chapter.

After finishing it, I saw some reviews comparing it to Christina Lauren's Love and Other Words (one of my favorite books). While reading ESA, I did mention to a friend how it reminded me of Love and Other Words, as well as Say You Still Love Me by K.A. Tucker; but I didn't realize just how similar it was to L&OW until I flipped back through. I didn't do a side-by-side comparison, but at the very least it does seem Fortune may have gotten a lot of her inspiration from that book. Take that for what's it worth.

Overall, I really enjoyed Fortune's writing style and will definitely be picking up more from her. I'm looking forward to reading what she writes next.

"I loved you," he whispers.
"I know," I say...
"You broke my heart."
"I know that, too."

When a writer makes your heart break with just a few sentences you know you are reading a book that will be become a classic (and hopefully a movie).

Every Summer After by debut author Carley Fortune is a romance novel that will live in my heart for a long time. Writing with honest feelings, real characters and true storytelling this writer has created a coming of age journey worthy of romance readers.

Persephone (Percy) meets Sam at the tender age of 13 when her parents buy the summer cottage next to their year round home. Told from Percy's point of view we follow through the teen years as she and Sam become best friends and navigate adolescence.

Sadly, when they start college things go awry and it will be 12 years before they see each other again for a very sad reason. I just want to pause to say the scenes where they reunite and the one in Sam' s truck was heartbreaking, endearing, sexy, sad and realistic in it's grabbing whatever happiness you can at the moment.

This story surprised me on many levels. It portrays panic attacks, self doubt, transitioning into adulthood and regret with such understanding and compassion. I wanted to be angry with these would be lovers but I just couldn't because their responses to events was honest and human; especially for how young they were at the time.

Why the falling out? Why are they brought back together? Why did the panic attacks start? Will they find their way back to one another? Every Summer After they met they were together until they weren't but sometimes summer can last all year long. Read the book, let your heart break and be so grateful the author decided to write a romance novel.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via #netgalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

It's been about a week since I finished this, so I've had some time to reflect. Ultimately this book is about regret, connection, forgiveness of both self and others, and second chances. It's the kind of book where I wanted to tell Percy to take deep breaths to ground and I had to remember to take deep breaths as I was reading. Some of the content was hard.

Percy and Sam first meet when they are in middle school. Percy's family bought a cottage next to Sam's house. They click (best friends) and have six summers together. Fast forward 10 years and Percy is heading back for Sam's mom's funeral. We know something happened 10 years ago, but we're not sure what. The book alternates between the present and the past, slowly revealing the events that unfolded. I really felt for both Percy and Sam and their connection and their humanness. It felt real. I will read more by this author. Given the ages of the main characters and the premise, this did feel like the New Adult genre.

This reminded me of Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. All options are my own.

What a great beach read. Flashbacks of past summers, friendship turning to love, a dreamy cast of characters…and a romance where we get a front row seat of watching it evolve and then fall apart. The writing is really good and I read it in one sitting. Put this one in your beach bag! You are going to love it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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

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.