Thoughts on : Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Genre : Contemporary Romance
Stand alone
About the Book :
They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser that has felt too true for the last decade, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in the city, keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart. Until the day she gets a call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek.
For five summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family 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. And slowly that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.
When Percy returns to the lake to attend Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. Percy must confront the decisions she’s made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, in order to determine, once and for all, whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
When I first saw the cover for Every Summer After, I immediately wanted to read it. I thought there was such a nostalgic quality to it, and it evoked summer and romance so perfectly I needed to know what it was about.
Every Summer After is a story about first love and second chances. Alternating between then and now, we get to watch Percy and Sam fall in love, knowing something will eventually break them apart. Though the dialogue didn’t always feel the most natural, I loved their interactions both in the past and the present and thought they were a good (though messy) match, and I was rooting for them.
I also loved everything about the setting. I could visualize the lake, the sunsets, the cottage, everything. I love when authors take the time to bring the setting to life, it anchors the characters into the story and makes it much more believable to me.
Honestly, based on vibes alone, I’d probably give this book a 5 stars, but there were a few things that kept me from completely loving it, the most important being the ending. I didn’t mind the “big reveal”, as I’d guessed it pretty early into the story, but it happened way too late. Percy and Sam barely had any time to work things through! The secret is revealed, there’s a few tears, apologies, and it ends. But the thing is, their relationship was so messy, the communication so lacking in some crucial aspects; in order to believe that they are solid, that this is their HEA, I needed to see them work things through some more, not just through the last 5 pages and a rushed epilogue.
In the same vein, I thought there was a bit too much “then” and not enough “now”. At times it felt almost more like a YA book. Which is interesting, because I know the book has been compared to Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren, which is one that I haven’t read yet (but now want to read soon so I can compare!) But I also thought there were a lot of parallels to The Summer I Turned Pretty series by Jenny Han. These were YA books, so of course more tame in content, but from what I remember, there were definitely some similar themes and twists.
All in all though, I really enjoyed this one. Every Summer after was a perfect summer read with both sweet and heartbreaking moments, a touch of nostalgia and a beautiful lake setting.
