More summer please… ⭐️ Book Review ⭐ Every Summer After Author: Carley Fortune Book Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is Fortune’s debut novel! She’s a former journalist for some heavy hitting Canadian publications. She decided to take the author plunge during COVID. I’ve said this before, but I will say it again, journalists make excellent authors. They just get tight narratives that aren’t drowning in descriptions. BUT can they write romance?? Yes they can! I would describe Every Last Summer as a YA Colleen Hoover. The book follows Persephone and Sam, who meet during the summer at their families' cottages when they are thirteen years-old. The book is told in alternating timelines, “Now” when the two are 30, and the summers the two spend together from 13-18 years-old in Northern Canada. At the beginning of the novel we find out that something happened during the last summer that broke them up. In the “Now” chapters, the two reconnect after 12 years for Sam’s mom’s funeral. You have to wait until the end to find out what happened 12 years ago and what will happen now. The summer chapters are my favourite. They are just lovely and sweet and will make you feel nostalgic for your teen crushes. You spend 5 years just watching this love blossom and grow. It’s just gorgeous writing. The “Now” chapters are hostile and awkward. They are more challenging to read as you don’t know why these two are feeling this way to each other and when they are juxtaposed with the summer chapters it takes you out of the romance. I would’ve much preferred if the story was told chronologically. It’s hard to be emotionally thrust into the future and believe these two as past loves when you haven’t experienced their love story yet. I love the building of their love story and I wanted to stay there for a while THEN you can break them up, destroy me, and THEN get them back together making me warm and fuzzy. There is something magical about youth, the lake and no technology that allows for deep connection, which Fortune captured so beautifully.

Posted by Bettys Book Club at 2022-05-19 12:47:46 UTC