Review: Every Summer After

Title: Every Summer After
Author: Carley Fortune
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Tandem Collective
Format: Paperback
Release Date: May 10, 2022
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads 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.

Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right.

Review:

Persephone Fraser made the biggest mistake of her life twelve years ago. She no longer spends summers at a cottage in Barry’s Bay, now working as a magazine editor in Toronto. However, when she receives a phone call that her former neighbour passed away, she rushes back to her summer home and back to her former best friend, Sam Florek. Percy and Sam were inseparable for six summers in their teenage years, working together in his family’s restaurant and swimming in the lake. But then something happened to make them not speak for twelve years. Now, Percy has to confront her past and try to fix her big mistake. 

This story really tugged at my heartstrings. It was an extremely slow burn romance. I kept wishing Sam and Percy would get together sooner because their chemistry was so strong. The big revelations at the end were heartbreaking. My only critique is that the ending seemed quite short. I would have liked to see more of a happily every after for Percy and Sam because their romance was short lived on the pages. 

Every Summer After is the perfect summer romance!

Thank you Tandem Collective and Penguin Random House Canada for sending me a copy of this book!

Content warnings: death of parent, panic attacks, anxiety, alcohol use, cheating

What to read next:

Have you read Every Summer After? What did you think of it?