📖 Every Summer After

👤 Author: Carley Fortune
📚 Genre: Contemporary Romance • Second-Chance Romance
🏢 Publisher: Berkley
📅 Publication Date: May 10, 2022
📄 Pages: 336
⭐ Rating: 4 Stars

I really enjoyed Every Summer After. Percy and Sam’s story pulled me in because we get to know them first as two kids who become best friends, long before everything gets complicated. Watching that friendship grow over their summers together made it easy for me to become attached to them. I wasn’t just waiting for the romance—I cared about the friendship underneath it.

I also liked the way the story moved between the past and present. We know early on that something happened between Percy and Sam, but we don’t immediately know everything that went wrong. Going back through their summers together allowed me to see all those little moments that shaped their relationship while also wondering how two people who had once been so close ended up spending years apart.

And I was absolutely on their side. Even when their story became messy, I wanted good things for both of them. I think that’s what made this romance work so well for me. By the time everything was revealed, I already cared about these characters and had a reason to want them to find their way through everything that had happened.

This was also one of those romances where the setting added something to the story for me. The summers at the lake, growing up together, and all those memories tied to one place gave it that nostalgic feeling of looking back at a time in your life that you can never completely recreate.

There were definitely choices made along the way that frustrated me, but they also gave Percy and Sam’s relationship some weight. Their story wasn’t simply about two people falling in love—it was about growing up, making mistakes, living with the consequences, and figuring out whether something that once meant so much could still have a place in their lives years later.

And after spending the whole book hoping things would work out for them, I was happy with the ending. I closed this one feeling satisfied, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

🌙 Julie’s Final Verdict

Every Summer After gave me something I really want from a romance: a reason to care about the couple beyond their chemistry. I got to know Percy and Sam as friends first, watched them grow up together, and became invested in what happened to them along the way. It was sweet, messy, nostalgic, and emotional—and by the end, I felt like the journey had been worth it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars