A Beautiful Summer Setting—and a Love Story That Lost Me

A Beautiful Beginning

I closed Every Summer After with mixed feelings. I enjoyed Carley Fortune’s writing. Her prose is vivid, immersive, and easy to settle into. Yet by the final page, I found myself admiring the way the novel was written far more than I enjoyed the story it told.

The novel began as a beautiful love story between two teenagers and gradually became a winding journey through the hedge maze of their relationship. The deeper I ventured, the more lost and frustrated I felt.

The opening chapters were strong. I loved the lakeside setting and the carefree summer atmosphere: the warm sunshine, the cool lake water against sun-warmed skin, and the seemingly infinite free time that comes with being young. Fortune captures the beauty and nostalgia of that stage of life exceptionally well. Her writing transported me into those summers and reminded me of what it feels like to experience friendship and first love before adulthood starts to complicate things.

In this respect, I can understand why Fortune’s books are so popular. She has an engaging, sensory writing style that makes her fictional worlds easy to enter. She also gives her characters distinct voices and personalities. From a craft perspective, there was plenty here for me to appreciate.

A Relationship That Wore Me Down

Unfortunately, the relationship at the center of the novel became the very thing that derailed my reading experience.

Sam and Percy have a persistent cat-and-mouse dynamic. Their relationship pushes forward, pulls backward, circles around itself, and repeatedly retreats just when it seems ready to progress. That kind of tension can be compelling, but here it continued for so long that it began to feel messy and disconnected rather than emotionally satisfying.

As the story unfolded, I grew increasingly impatient with both characters. Many of their choices did not make sense to me, even after the novel offered more insight into their fears and motivations. I was not merely frustrated with them; I often felt completely baffled by them. That made it difficult for me to empathize with them or remain emotionally invested in the outcome.

A Structure That Interrupted the Story

The novel alternates between past and present, gradually revealing how Sam and Percy’s relationship developed and what ultimately drove them apart. While I understand what this structure was intended to accomplish, the transitions sometimes occurred too frequently for me.

Whenever I became invested in one timeline, the story switched to the other. Instead of heightening anticipation, these jumps repeatedly interrupted the story’s momentum. I would settle into a time and place, become absorbed in that particular stage of the relationship, and then be pulled away before the emotional thread could fully develop. Fewer transitions might have allowed both timelines to feel more immersive and emotionally complete.

A Reveal That Fell Flat

I was also disappointed by the novel’s major reveal: the mistake Percy made a decade earlier. I guessed what had happened very early in the story, so the eventual confirmation felt anticlimactic rather than surprising.

The predictability itself was not necessarily the problem. A reveal can still be powerful when its emotional consequences are handled with depth. My greater disappointment was the way the situation was resolved among the characters involved. After the novel had spent so much time withholding this event and presenting it as the source of years of pain, the resolution ultimately felt weightless.

For such a consequential reveal, it landed with surprisingly little force. I wanted a more substantial confrontation with the hurt, betrayal, and accountability involved. Instead, the characters’ responses felt emotionally disproportionate to the significance the story had placed on the reveal.

Who Might Enjoy This Book

Readers who enjoy following a relationship across several years and stages of young adulthood may connect with this story more than I did. Every Summer After explores young love, long distance, misunderstandings, distrust, and the enduring hold a formative relationship can have.

The novel’s push-pull romantic dynamic will also appeal to readers who enjoy relationships built around prolonged tension and unresolved history. The premise is undeniably appealing, and Fortune’s writing makes the lakeside setting feel like a place you could disappear into for an entire summer alongside the story’s characters.

Final Thoughts

Every Summer After gave me a setting I wanted to stay in and a relationship I wanted to leave behind.

I appreciated Fortune’s immersive prose, nostalgic atmosphere, and ability to create distinctive characters. Unfortunately, the instability of Sam and Percy’s relationship, the frequent timeline changes, and the underwhelming resolution ultimately kept the story from working for me.

The reading experience left me more frustrated than moved. This simply was not the love story for me.

Rating: 2.5 stars