By Carley Fortune
Every Summer After tells the story of Persephone Fraser and her life leading up to and recovering from what she recalls as the biggest mistake of her life. Nearly 30 now, Percy, as we come to know her as, receives a call out of the blue from Charlie Florek, a man who once made up most of her childhood, who tells her that he and his brother Sam’s mother has died, and he wants her to come back to Barry’s Bay, where she spent most of the summers of her teenage years falling in love with Sam Florek. That is, until she broke his heart. She hasn’t seen him or heard from him since the incident, over ten years ago, and she has done everything she could to build a wall around her heart since then. But now, when she returns to Barry’s Bay, everything hits a little too close to home.
The book is told from two perspectives: the present, as Percy ventures back to Barry’s Bay and sees Sam and Charlie for the first time in over ten years, and the past, telling the story of the summers leading up to the incident; the summers during which Percy and Sam fell in love. Percy, as a middle schooler, arrives in Barry’s Bay for the first time because her parents want to give her a safe space, away from school, where certain girls weren’t being very nice. The very first day, she meets Sam, and the two shy teenagers become fast friends. They swim together in the lake, watch movies together in Sam’s basement, and read together in Percy’s bedroom. They simply just love spending time together, and eventually, that grows into a crush.
Meanwhile, in the present, Percy, who goes by Persephone, has a great job, a fancy apartment, and fancy friends. She dates, but she doesn’t get attached, and she is more or less happy with her life, except for the part deep down that eats away at her constantly. When she gets the call from Charlie that his mother has passed away, she knows she must go back. She also knows that that means facing Sam for the first time since everything went down. When she arrives back in Barry’s Bay, she runs into Sam within the first hour or so of her arrival. And it’s awkward, but it also feels like coming home.
Simultaneously, we’re watching the romance of young Sam and Percy grow, change, and come crashing down. As the two navigate young adulthood together, but physically separate, things become a lot harder than they anticipated. So difficult, that Percy ends up making the biggest mistake of her life.
I really liked this book, up until the very end. But I’ll get to that. I loved the setting of this book: a lake house in a small town. Days filled with swimming and laying out in the sun, or cozied up reading or watching movies. Sort of like having a second life, an escape, that’s special and only for you. I loved Sam as a character, as well. He was sweet and cute as a boy, quirky and kind and confident. As a man, he is more forgiving than anyone I’ve ever known, and handsome as can be. I also liked the switch perspective nature of the book – getting closer and closer to finding out what happened to rip the two apart from both ends.
However, I did not like the ending. I think the ending was a cop-out, that Carley Fortune could’ve done better. It was predictable, and honestly not very realistic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that if I had been a character in this book, the sin would not have been forgivable. Reading the book, I thought that I might know what the ending would be, and I was hoping I was wrong. I was hoping Fortune would shock me, but she did not.
So overall, I enjoyed this book, but the ending disappointed me. Still worth the read; I just expected more from Fortune.
Steaminess Rating:
Will you be reading Every Summer After?
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