Every Year After - The Debrief

Every Summer After has been a five-star read for me ever since I picked it up upon release in 2022. Carley Fortune writes with such an intimacy, that even the most familiar of romance tropes turn into rich stories that feel emotional and deeply human.

That is definitely the defining feature which has helped make Every Summer After the latest in a long line of books to receive the coveted screen adaptation. Newly titled, Every Year After.

And if you’ve been around for a while, you know I LOVE analyzing and giving my POV on the latest and greatest book to screen adaptations.

If you’re new here, you can check out some of my previous adaptation thoughts below. Otherwise, let’s get into Every Summer After.

Now I’m going to preface by saying this is going to sound overly negative as I think I have a (poor) habit of watching things with a cynical eye. I enjoyed this show, don’t let some of my other opinions takeaway from that. But I equally have a large amount of critique and thoughts that feel worth expressing.

At its core, Every Summer After is a story built on a shared history between Persephone (Percy) and Sam. It’s more than friends to lovers. And it’s more than drama between exes.

It’s the idea of growing up alongside someone for so long that they become family. Someone who knows every version of you. Someone who has shared all of your best moments. Someone who has moulded your likes, dislikes and the person you become as an adult. Someone who when you look back at your childhood you think, they were my best friend.

So, did the adaptation successfully capture that sentiment?

Sadly not for me.

And I think that comes down to two main factors:

1. Visual juxtaposition

2. Screen time

Let’s start with the visual storytelling.

I thought Juliette Hawke and Blue Clarke were incredible as the younger versions of Percy and Sam. In fact, during the first episode, I found their performances much stronger than those of the main adult cast, who came across as awkward. The car scene in particular with Percy and Chantel felt strangely stiff, and I actually noted that it felt as if I was watching a self-tape rather than a finished scene. I’m not sure from a production standpoint if perhaps they filmed chronologically, but it came across on screen that those opening scenes were the first to be shot.

Anyway I digress, the teenage actors were great but they simply weren’t in it enough. I wanted more of them.

Once the show transitioned into using the main cast to portray the younger versions of themselves, a lot of the clarity got lost. Episode 3 was where I noticed it the most. I often found myself struggling to determine whether we were in the past or present because there were so little visual cues to distinguish the timelines.

If the production wasn’t going to continue using younger actors, I wish it had leaned more heavily into clear visual markers. Could we have had different hairstyles? Wardrobe choices? Colour grading? Aspect ratio? Literally anything that would instantly orient me that we were in those scenes of the past. The timelines frequently blended together, all versions of Sam, Percy, Charlie and Delilah resembling eachother, and truly taking me away from the emotional narrative and into the mindset “where are we?”

My second issue comes down to how the show allocated its screentime.

I didn’t actually mind the increased focus on the present-day storyline. What I did mind was how much of that time was spent on unnecessary side plots that distracted from the true heart of this story. To put simply, I did not care for any of Delilah, Chantel, Jordie or Drew(?).

For example, the opening episodes spend significant time with Delilah. While I understand the desire from show-writers to expand the world, that screen time could have been used to further establish why Percy cherished those summers so deeply and why Barry’s Bay and the Floreks became such an important escape from her everyday life. In fact, they could have gave us more about Sue Florek who’s death literally frames the entire story and drives Percy back to Barrys Bay, yet we barely feel her connection to Percy when she was alive.

Instead we get Delilah scenes that felt more like Made in Chelsea, than they did from a wholesome romance and scene after scene of Chantel and Jordy, making Barry’s Bay feel more like a bustling coastal destination full of drama, than a remote cottage community.

I simply did not care about any of them and they offered nothing within the show narrative, that warranted their expansion beyond the book versions of themselves. Also, tangent - if you are going to make Chantel a central character why make her emotionally cheat on her fiancee and brush over it? Give the girl some dignity.

As a result, the relationship between Percy and Sam never fully reaches that kindred bond that the novel portrays because we are so distracted. Instead of feeling like two people whose lives were fundamentally shaped by one another and who are destined to be together, it sometimes felt like two people stuck in a toxic cycle of forced proximity.

Overall, it completely diluted the intimacy and emotion that made the book so special. Rather than a coming-of-age romance centred on Percy and Sam, this adaptation felt like an ensemble drama. And an underdeveloped one at that.

My final criticism is the ending.

I understand the decision to leave room for Charlie’s sequel, (I actually look forward to it given it’s the strongest of Fortune’s books in my opinion), but Every Summer After was originally published as a debut standalone novel. Because of that, this series should have had a strong sense of closure for Percy and Sam’s story.

Instead, of an epilogue or a glimpse into their newfound future, we get a rushed reunion and very little indication of what comes next. That ending felt incomplete and emotionally separate from what we felt at the end of the book. It’s like the emotional impact went from 100 to 0.

To summarise, overall, I enjoyed the adaptation, but I don’t think it fully captured the heart, the intimacy or the affection that made me love this novel so much.

I’d love to hear what everyone else thought.

Did the adaptation live up to your expectations, or were you equally bummed by some of the choices?

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