I can read any book any time of the year, but sometimes it’s nice to read a summer read during the summer. Every Summer After is a book that’s all over bookstagram right now and I was curious. It was also a the book of the month for a book club I’m in, so I had to pick it up. Keep on reading to find out more about this book and what I thought!

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.

Review

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

For me it’s always a good sign when I pick up a book and just can’t put it down. That was the case with Every Summer After. I’m a huge fan of dual timelines. Especially when it shows our main characters getting to know each other when they were younger. I finished this book in about a day!

At first our main character Percy wasn’t having a great year and that’s why her parents decide it’s time to spend the summer at a cottage they bought. That’s where she meets Sam and they become great friends. I love friends to lovers and it’s was clear even when they were 13 that they just worked together. It was fun watching them grow up during the summers they spent together as well with e-mails when they weren’t in the same city. Sometimes there was drama and overthinking, but that’s normal with being a teenager. It felt realistic and I loved that small town.

Then we get the present when Percy goes back for Sam’s mother’s funeral and things get tricky. It’s clear something went down between them, but also that there are definitely still feelings. Percy and Sam had a complicated relationship and it was interesting see them grow closer again, but also still a bit hesitant. In all honesty, this book was a 5 star read until near the very end. There’s a reveal near the end that I just didn’t completely understand and it didn’t fit the story in my opinion. I could’ve done without that part.

All in all, Every Summer After was a great summer read. I loved the focus on friendship, family, love, growing up, and evening finding each other again. I definitely want to read more by Carley Fortune.

Even though I could’ve done without the reveal at the end, I do think Every Summer After was a great summer read. It definitely made me long to live near a lake, haha. What are some of your favorite summer reads? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!