Every Summer After

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW THE PRIME ORIGINAL SERIES EVERY YEAR AFTER

"A radiant debut."—Emily Henry,#1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life

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 story of love and the people and choices that mark us forever.

As featured in Today ∙ Parade ∙ PopSugar ∙ USA Today ∙ SheReads ∙ BuzzFeed ∙ BookBub ∙ Bustle ∙ and more!

Carley Fortune is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of EVERY SUMMER AFTER, ONE GOLDEN SUMMER, MEET ME AT THE LAKE, and THIS SUMMER WILL BE DIFFERENT. Her fifth novel, OUR PERFECT STORM, is out May 5, 2026. Her books have sold more than four million copies, have been translated into 30 languages, and adapted for television.

"Fortune’s subtle writing is suffused with heartache, and she does an especially good job capturing the unmistakable aura of summer on the lake in small-town Ontario—a setting that shimmers with heat and makes Sam and Percy’s passionate love story breezy and inviting."—The New York Times

“Any book that begins with a cocktail and a heartbreak-induced haircut has a strong likelihood of being just the book for me, but Every Summer After outshone even my highest hopes. Fortune’s wit is sharp, her prose is gorgeous, and her characters thrum with the rare kind of life and breath we readers are constantly on the lookout for. This is a radiant debut that packs an emotional wallop.”—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life

"Fortune’s debut novel is filled with nostalgia and heart. Percy and Sam’s history is compelling and nuanced, making the story fly by faster than the summer months themselves. Although just like the places we spend our summers, and the people we meet along the way, Percy and Sam just might stay in your heart far beyond the last page.”—USA Today

“The magic and romance of summer is palpable."—Popsugar

"Every Summer After is a quintessential summer novel, full of longing and lost love, and hits on so many beloved tropes. You’ll want to gobble it up in one satisfying bite.”—BuzzFeed

“A sweet story about second chances, and how the future we imagine for ourselves is never quite what it turns out to be.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

“Carley Fortune perfects the nostalgia of young summer love and the choices that change us forever in Every Summer After, a smart and delightful novel that will tug on your heartstrings, and more than satisfy fans of Emily Henry."—Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

“Just like summer, I didn’t want this epic, nostalgic tale of youthful romance all grown up to end.”—Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of Lucky

“Fortune deftly explores the push and pull of a relationship burdened by past mistakes and misunderstandings, and how it’s as much about choice as it is fate. Evocative and nostalgic.”—Karma Brown, bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife

“In the mood for summertime nostalgia (cottage summers, young crushes, sandy nights)? Carley Fortune brings those lakeshore towns and emotional memories to life in Every Summer After about haunting past choices and second-chance love.”—Parade

“A spectacular debut . . . Alternating between the past and present, the story flawlessly conveys the lovers’ growth both together and apart, and the summery setting provides an idyllic backdrop to their path back to each other. Centered on redemption and forgiveness, this sweeping, heartfelt romance proves impossible to put down.”—Publishers Weekly(starred review)

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune is a nostalgic, emotionally tender love story that moves back and forth between past and present, tracing how one magical childhood friendship turns into an intense first love—and how a single, painful mistake can echo for years. At the center of the novel is Persephone “Percy” Friesen, who grows up spending her summers at a lake in Ontario, and Sam Florek, the boy next door whose family owns the local restaurant. The book follows them over six crucial summers as teenagers and then one significant weekend in adulthood, showing how those warm days by the water shape their lives. It’s very much a story about first love, second chances, and the way time can both soften and sharpen our regrets.

When Percy is a young teen, her parents buy a cottage at the lake, and it feels like a whole new world compared to her life in the city. She’s a bit bookish, awkward, and unsure of herself, but the lake offers freedom: swimming, sun, late nights, and a sense of possibility. Early on, she meets Sam, who lives there year round with his mom, Sue, and brother, Charlie. Sam is quiet, thoughtful, and obsessed with becoming a doctor someday. He’s different from the boys Percy is used to—more serious, but also kind, steady, and genuinely interested in her. They bond quickly over books, shared curiosity, and the rituals of summer: reading together on the dock, trading jokes, exploring the lake, and confiding in each other about their families, fears, and dreams.

Each summer they grow closer. Their friendship deepens into something more charged, even before either of them fully admits it. The novel captures that slow, sweet shift—long glances, small touches that mean more than they say, private jokes that feel like a language only they speak. Percy learns to rely on Sam as her anchor, and Sam sees Percy as the person who understands him best. There’s a natural intimacy in how they share everything: Percy’s nervousness about her changing body and growing up, Sam’s grief and sense of responsibility, especially as his family faces challenges. The lake becomes their safe place, the backdrop to all their major milestones. For Percy, returning each year is not just about the cottage; it’s about Sam.

The summers are interwoven with the present day timeline, where we meet Percy in her early thirties. She is living in Toronto, working as a writer and editor in the magazine world, and she has not been back to the cottage or seen Sam in over a decade. Something happened in their final summer that broke everything between them, and Percy has spent years trying to live with the fallout. She’s in a relationship, but it’s clear that Sam is still the person who occupies her heart’s deepest space, even if she doesn’t say it aloud. An unexpected phone call about a funeral—Sue, Sam’s mother, has died—pulls Percy back to the lake for the first time since she left. She knows she’ll see Sam again, and the prospect fills her with equal parts longing and dread.

When Percy returns, the lake has changed and stayed the same in all the familiar ways: the cottages, the water, the restaurant, the Florek house. Seeing Sam again brings all the old feelings rushing back. He is older, more guarded, but still essentially Sam—the boy she loved, now a man who has built his life without her. Their reunion is charged and complicated. Sam has reasons to be hurt and angry; Percy has reasons to feel guilty and afraid of what he’ll say. Over the course of the weekend, they are forced to confront not only their shared past, but also the distance between who they were and who they are now.

The book gradually reveals the “big mistake” that tore them apart, and it isn’t something small. As teenagers, Percy and Sam finally cross that line from friendship into romance. Their last summer together is intense and beautiful, full of new physical and emotional intimacy. They’re finally giving voice to feelings that have been simmering for years. Percy, however, is also overwhelmed—by fear of losing herself, fear of change, and fear of how strong her feelings are. In that confusion, she makes a choice that deeply betrays Sam, involving his brother Charlie and a moment of weakness that has lifelong consequences. It is a choice that doesn’t fit the Percy we’ve come to know, which makes it feel all the more like a realistic, painful teenage mistake: driven by insecurity, impulsiveness, and a fear of vulnerability, rather than cruelty.

In the adult timeline, Percy knows she was wrong and has carried that remorse for years. She has built a career and a life, but nothing has truly replaced what she lost with Sam. She skipped funerals, avoided the lake, and tried to bury her memories, yet they kept resurfacing through dreams and small reminders. Facing Sam again means facing that younger version of herself who hurt him and herself. The novel lets us see Percy’s inner struggle clearly: she desperately wants his forgiveness, but she also believes she may not deserve it. At the same time, she still loves him, and being back at the lake makes that impossible to ignore.

Sam’s hurt is evident. He spent years picking up the pieces after Percy left, watching his family change, and going through his own losses. He became a doctor, fulfilling the dream he’d shared with Percy, but he had to do it without her support. When Percy returns, Sam is hesitant to open up; he doesn’t want to be damaged all over again. However, their shared history, the powerful pull of their old bond, and the grief over his mother’s death create space for conversations that never happened. As they talk—about books, about the old days, about what went wrong—we see that neither of them stopped caring; they simply didn’t know how to bridge the gap between them.

The strength of Every Summer After lies in how it captures the texture of nostalgia: the smell of sunscreen, the familiarity of an old dock, the way a place holds your younger self like a ghost. The summers are golden and imperfect at the same time, full of teenage awkwardness, first kisses, fights, reconciliations, and the slow realization that some people aren’t just part of your life—they are its center. In contrast, the present is cooler and more complicated, colored by adult responsibilities and the weight of regret. The back and forth structure makes it clear how the past shapes the present: every small choice, every joke, every moment of closeness leads to the final crisis and the emotional reckoning years later.

Throughout the novel, Percy is learning to forgive herself without minimizing what she did, and Sam is deciding whether he can risk loving her again. The question isn’t just “will they get back together,” but “can they honestly face what happened and still choose each other?” The story suggests that love can survive mistakes, but only if there is real accountability and openness. Percy must own her actions, and Sam must be willing to see more than just the hurt. Their conversations are sometimes raw, sometimes tender, and they feel grounded in real human emotion rather than easy melodrama.

In the end, Every Summer After is about the way time loops back on us. The summers Percy and Sam shared were short in the grand scheme of their lives, but they left marks that never faded. The lake isn’t just a setting; it’s the symbol of who they were and who they might be again. The novel leaves the reader with the sense that while we can’t undo the past, we can still choose what we do with it—whether we let it define us forever or use it as a starting point for a different kind of future. Percy and Sam’s story is both bittersweet and hopeful, showing that first love doesn’t always vanish; sometimes it waits, changed but still alive, for the moment when two people are finally ready to try again.