A review by abbier_14
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I know this book gets compared to love and other words but I can’t really remember what happens in that one, all I remember if that I loved it and finished it in a day so was automatically a 5 star.

But I am a sucker for long time friends to lovers, or coming back to each other after a long time apart so it’s kinda expected that I would really enjoy this.

I liked most of the characters which is rare for me. At first I didn’t really like the MC’s friend Dehlila or something but then I just grew to appreciate her and the things she said were less jarring.
I really liked both boys, I felt connected to them and I think they were good characters.
With the MC it’s hard to place as we were in her head but I’m sure if we saw her from someone else’s point of view I would like her. I felt like she did have a personality, we knew her struggles and likes so I thought she was also a good character.

Now with the plot. This book is dual timeline and it’s always frustrating as it makes there be a perspective that I find boring or less enjoyable. At the start of the book I hated being in the present as I wanted to just get to Sam and Percy meeting and interacting, but then as the book went on I started to enjoy both timelines.

However I would feel like both perspectives of the book are not slowburn. In the present perspective they get back together quite quickly which I could understand due to probably a burst of emotion after not seeing each other in 12 years, but if you were looking for more tension and angst when they see each other again then this book will not give you that.
Their first childhood romance also didn’t feel like slowburn to me. I think that’s because it’s hard to do a friends to lovers slow burn as they hang out all the time, so it feels like one minute they are platonic and then the next minute they’re kissing. 
But I did enjoy the romance, and I wanted them to get together at the end. But tbh I am kinda iffy at the whole cheating thing, but in that point of the book I was just happy that some of the tension between her and Charlie had been taken away because of all that flirting needed to go somewhere lol.

I feel like another thing I would have liked is the funeral and Sue’s death to be talked about more. I know that the romance is the main focus of this book but I felt like her death was kinda put on the back burner, and the characters didn’t really act as if they were there for a funeral. Ig this was kinda explained as they had already have time to come to terms with her dying, but I bet this book could have been even more emotional than it already was.

So yeah at the beginning I was waiting for it to pick up but omg it does. If I wasn’t reading this in public I would probably have been crying my eyes out. Honestly it made my heart hurt and I feel so happy for them.