Every Summer After by Carley Fortune


Publication Date: May 10, 2022


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

MY THOUGHTS:

This. Book. I was hooked from the first chapter, the first sentence, the first word. If you want to relive young summer love, this is the PERFECT book for you. As a massive fan of The Summer I Turned Pretty, this book gave me all the same vibes and the same feeling I got reading that book for the first time. I ADORED this story and these characters so much.


I also loooooooved the dual timelines. I just kept pulling me in over and over again. I honestly can’t say anything bad about this book. Reading Every Summer After is what I wish reading was like for every book I open. I will forever wish I could read this again for the first time!

☆ Rating: 5/5 stars 

FAVORITE QUOTES


“Betrayals don’t cancel each other out. They just hurt more.”


“I loved you so much that the word 'love' didn't seem big enough for how I felt.”


“You and me are special,” he started. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than you. There’s no one else I’d rather talk to than you. And there’s no one else I’d rather kiss than you.”


“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”


“It’s taken a lot of work for Sam and me to get here as well—for us to find our footing as a couple, to trust each other, and for me to fight off the persistent voice that tells me I’m not good enough, that I don’t deserve him or my happiness. We’ve snapped at each other, we’ve flung accusations around, and we’ve yelled, but we’ve both stuck around and cleaned up the mess. We’ve also been friends. And that’s the part that’s been easy—laughing, teasing, rooting for each other. We can still speak to each other without speaking.”


FAVORITE QUOTES


“Betrayals don’t cancel each other out. They just hurt more.”


“I loved you so much that the word 'love' didn't seem big enough for how I felt.”


“You and me are special,” he started. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than you. There’s no one else I’d rather talk to than you. And there’s no one else I’d rather kiss than you.”


“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”


“It’s taken a lot of work for Sam and me to get here as well—for us to find our footing as a couple, to trust each other, and for me to fight off the persistent voice that tells me I’m not good enough, that I don’t deserve him or my happiness. We’ve snapped at each other, we’ve flung accusations around, and we’ve yelled, but we’ve both stuck around and cleaned up the mess. We’ve also been friends. And that’s the part that’s been easy—laughing, teasing, rooting for each other. We can still speak to each other without speaking.”