Warm weather and a beach read are my bread and butter. Truthfully, I read romance books all year round, but there’s a particular magic to a good summer love story. When I’m looking for something to get lost in while the sun’s out, Carley Fortune is one author who usually checks all my boxes. As someone who’s spent many a summer lakeside, Carley’s books have always felt so nostalgic to me. But I’m not the only one who’s fallen in love with her worlds. She’s sold millions of copies, topped multiple bestseller lists, and I expect Every Year After, the TV adaptation of her debut novel, to rule our screens later this summer.
Between the anticipation of the show’s first season and the release of her latest book, Our Perfect Storm, I thought this was the perfect time to revisit and rank everything Carley Fortune has penned so far. Wondering what’s at the top of my list? Keep reading to find out.
5. This Summer Will Be Different
Lucy vacations at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. They vow to never repeat that electric night again, but it’s easier said than done. When Bridget suddenly flees to the island a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to.
Five summers ago, Lucy visited Prince Edward Island for the first time and had a one-night stand with Felix—only to discover the next morning that he’s the brother of her best friend Bridget. Every year since, Lucy spends her vacations on PEI trying to ignore the undeniable chemistry she has with him. But now, with Bridget getting married and big opportunities at work, a lot of things are changing this summer…perhaps things with Felix could evolve, too.
I knew that This Summer Will Be Different would likely be at the bottom of my ranking because I’d tried to read it once before and couldn’t get into it. But I soldiered on this time, and unfortunately, it’s staying in fifth place. I liked Lucy as an individual character, but I wasn’t rooting for her to end up with Felix. Granted, the whole premise stems from a steamy one-night stand, but even as the story went on, I found it hard to see their connection outside of a physical one.
4. Meet Me at the Lake
Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the artist. Their connection was undeniable, and they made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t. Years later, Fern’s back home, running her mother’s lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. And then Will arrives, nine years too late, with an offer to help. But how could she possibly trust this person who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago?
Fern spent a life-altering 24 hours with Will, running around Toronto looking for adventure. Before the night ends, they promise to reconnect one year later…But Will doesn’t show. It’s not until a decade has passed, and Fern finds herself in charge of running her late mother’s lakeside resort, that Will reappears in her life. Can these two rescue the struggling resort and whatever is left of their relationship?
My relationship with this book is tricky: my mental rating has steadily dropped since I last read it, even though I enjoy it while I’m actively reading. One area where I think Carley Fortune excels is in her subplots. She likes to explore complicated mother/daughter dynamics, which absolutely shines here. Parts of this story are told through diary entries written by Fern’s late mother, which I thought was such an immersive way to move things forward.
I also love a good second-chance romance, but it’s hard to feel invested in Fern and Will when the foundation of their relationship was quite literally built in a day. This is definitely not the most realistic romance, which doesn’t matter for some readers at all, so take my review with a grain of salt!
3. Our Perfect Storm
Frankie and George have been best friends since they were eight years old. But it’s the eve of Frankie’s wedding weekend, and she doesn’t know if George will even show up. In walks George, and for one glorious evening, Frankie’s life is finally perfect—until her fiancé dumps her the next morning. George has a plan—he wants her to go on her honeymoon. With him. Frankie agrees, seeing the trip as one last chance to repair their friendship. Even if it means unearthing secrets and long buried feelings neither knows how to handle.
Frankie and George. George and Frankie. They’ve been best friends since they were kids, and Frankie can’t wait to have him by her side as her best man. At least she was, before being dumped on the morning of her wedding. To help Frankie heal, George suggests they go on the trip that would have been her honeymoon. But while getting over one relationship, Frankie finds herself questioning another one.
The newest of Carley Fortune’s books is such a great escape and perfect for summer. Friends-to-lovers is the superior trope in my opinion, and this isn’t the first time she’s used it in one of her books. I spent the entire time screaming for Frankie and George to just get together already, and then screaming in a different way once they finally did. My only gripe is that the conflict towards the end of the book felt almost unnecessary, like it was just there for the sake of conflict. That definitely put a damper on my reading experience, but I still enjoyed it enough overall to rank it higher on this list.
2. Every Summer After
For six summers, 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.
Ever since she was a kid, Percy has spent her summers at the lake in Barry’s Bay with the Florek brothers, Charlie and Sam. Percy’s relationship with Sam grows from friendship to something more, then to nothing at all—and she hasn’t been back to the Bay since. But when Percy gets a phone call inviting her to a funeral, she’ll have to return to the place she once loved most and confront the choices that she and Sam made.
Every Summer After has such a special place in my heart because it feels like a grown-up version of the books I used to love as a teen (looking at you, The Summer I Turned Pretty). Carley Fortune’s debut novel nails it here with the friends-to-lovers trope and the slow burn to end all slow burns. I also enjoy seeing how Percy and Sam’s relationship builds over time as kids, compared to how they have to put the pieces back together in the present. I will say there is some, ahem, questionable behavior towards the end of this book that is a frequent topic of debate among my reader friends, but I at least can overlook it.
1. One Golden Summer
Alice spent just one summer at a cottage in Barry’s Bay with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the image that changed her life. When Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—and a shameless flirt. And when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.
Alice spent a summer with her grandmother Nan in Barry’s Bay when she was a teen, and it changed her life. Years later, when Nan breaks her hip, Alice has the perfect plan: they’ll go back to the Bay so Nan can recover and Alice can take a much-needed break from work. But their next-door neighbor, Charlie Florek, is great at causing trouble. The more time Alice spends around Charlie, the deeper their connection grows, but what will happen when summer comes to an end?
Not only is One Golden Summer my favorite of Carley Fortune’s books, but it’s also her strongest. I love how the characters we fell in love with from Every Summer After fit so seamlessly into this new story, while still allowing Charlie and Alice’s relationship to shine on its own. Their dynamic is flawed but feels so real, and seeing the ways Charlie has grown in between the two books makes him even more lovable as a leading man. If you’ve read this one, you probably aren’t surprised to see it in the top spot. It has everything I could ever ask for in a romance!
Hannah Carapellotti, Contributing Writer
Hannah is an Ann Arbor-based writer with a bachelor’s in English and writing from the University of Michigan. Outside of The Everygirl, Hannah has written for The Michigan Daily, where she also served as an editor. She currently works at an independent bookstore and is interning for a literary agency.
