Romance Books Like Every Summer After
My list of Romance Books Like Every Summer After by Carley Fortune is also a perfect list of Books To Read After You Watch Every Year After, coming to Prime Video in May 2026!
Romance Books Like Every Summer After
You’ve just finished reading Every Summer After OR watching Every Year After on Prime Video and you’re sitting there clutching a soggy tissue, unable to move on.
I know just what you need: more romance books like Every Summer After. Here are my top picks, starting with Carley Fortune’s backlist and branching out from there.
First off: more Carley Fortune
If you loved reading Every Summer After and/or watching Every Year After, the most logical next step is Carley Fortune’s other books. She wrote three more novels after Every Summer After, with a fourth coming out in May 2026. They all feel warm, nostalgic, and emotional, with romantic tension that builds slowly and pays off completely.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune (2022)
The book the show is based on (yes, they changed the title for the series).
If you watched first, read the source material. The dual timeline structure, covering six summers of Percy and Sam’s first love, then one pivotal weekend a decade later, hits differently on the page. Fortune gives you both characters’ inner lives in a way the show can only gesture toward, and the specificity of Barry’s Bay in summer is genuinely beautiful.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune (2023)
Fern and Will spent one perfect day together in Toronto, then lost each other completely. A year later, their paths cross again in circumstances neither of them expected. Meet Me at the Lake has a similar nostalgic ache and slow burn connection, but the setting (a lakeside resort) and the family history woven through the romance give it its own particular vibe.
The ESA connection: The lost-and-found structure, the Ontario lake setting, the grief threaded through the love story.
This Summer Will Be Different (2024)
Lucy and Felix have a rule: their one-night fling stays a one-time thing. Then her best friend starts dating his brother, and suddenly they keep ending up in the same place. Lighter in tone than ESA, and a little more rom-com in structure.
The ESA connection: The pull-toward-each-other-despite-trying-not-to energy, the found family dynamics, the magical Prince Edward Island summer setting.
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune (2025)
One Golden Summer takes us back to Barry’s Bay, where Sam’s older brother, Charlie, gets his own love story with Alice, a photographer who’s come to town to look after her grandmother.
The ESA connection: besides Charlie as a crossover character and the Barry’s Bay setting, this book has a similar slow burn romance and bittersweet emotions.
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune (May 2026)
Frankie and George have been best friends as long as they can remember. But now she’s getting married. Except that her fiancé dumps her. So George convinces her to go on her Vancouver Island honeymoon … with him.
The ESA connection: this seems like a variation on the Carley Fortune formula: a complicated friendship turns to love, the beach, and a mix of heartbreak and sweet romance.
If You Love the First Love Gets a Second Chance Angle
Have a Great Summer by Francesca Cocchi (2026)
Sun-soaked nostalgia, second chances, and all the messiness of growing up! After losing her job, Lina heads back to the Jersey shore to live with her parents and work as a wedding and events reporter for a small local media outlet. But she’s assigned to cover the wedding of the boy she crushed on as a teen, the one she never forgot!
The ESA Connection: Have a Great Summer is brimming with Jersey Shore vibes, millennial angst, female friendship, and a teenage crush that never quite faded. This second chance at love story set in a small seaside town is PERFECT for fans of Carley Fortune.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (2021)
Poppy and Alex have been best friends for ten years, taking one week of summer vacation together every year. Then two years ago, something broke their friendship and neither of them will name it. Henry’s novel unfolds across ten summers in flashback and one pivotal present-day trip, and the structure alone mirrors ESA closely enough to feel like a companion piece. The romantic tension is slow burn and the ending is deeply satisfying.
The ESA connection: Ten years of summers, one thing they won’t say out loud, a reunion that forces them to finally face it.
Check out the Netflix film adaptation, now streaming.
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (2021)
Eva and Shane spent one intense week together as teenagers. Twenty years later, they run into either other at a literary event in Brooklyn. What follows is seven days to figure out whether what they once had is still there and whether they are capable of something more lasting than fleeting passion. A Reese’s Book Club pick and one of the most beloved second-chance romances of recent years.
The ESA connection: One formative week of first love, twenty years of secret messages delivered via their respective books, then a reunion that asks whether the past can blossom into the future.
Once More, With Feeling by Elissa Sussman (2023)
Former teen pop star Kathleen gets a shot at her Broadway dreams ten years after her career as pop star “Katee” went up in flames, and discovers the director of the show is Cal Kirby, her secret first love from the wreckage of that scandal. Two timelines shift between then and now in a way that should feel familiar to ESA fans. The celebrity setting is very different from the lake country vibe, but the emotional structure will give you all the same vibes.
The ESA connection: Dual timeline, first love derailed by a catastrophic moment, second chance forged through proximity.
Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (2018)
I’m a Christina Lauren fan but hadn’t even heard of this book until I started researching this list. Pediatrics resident Macy is planning a wedding when she runs into her first love Elliott.
Told in alternating Then and Now timelines, this book explores their relationship in the past, explains why Macy is now so closed-off, and lets us watch them slowly, cautiously move toward each other in the present.
ESA connection: the then/now timeline, second chance with a first love…
If You Loved the Small Town Waterside Setting
Seven Summers by Paige Toon (2024)
Liv and Finn met six summers ago working in a bar on the Cornish coast. But one night of passion ended in devastating tragedy. They made a promise: Finn will return every year, and if they are single, they will spend the summer together.
But then Liv meets Tom, a mysterious new arrival in her hometown. For the first time she can imagine a world where her heart isn’t shattered every autumn. Now Liv must make an impossible choice.
The ESA connection: A setting at the seaside, a couple whose relationship was cut short, and a yearly meeting.
Happy Place by Emily Henry (2023)
Harriet and Wyn broke up months ago, but neither told their tight-knit friend group. Now they’re both arriving at the beloved Maine cottage their gang shares every summer, and they’ve agreed to pretend everything is fine. But it’s not: the cottage is for sale and many of the friends are hiding something…
The ESA connection: The specific grief of a beloved summer place, a relationship that fell apart without fully explaining itself, two people trying to navigate the wreckage.
Say You Still Love Me by K.A. Tucker (2018)
We loved K.A. Tucker back in the 2010s so I’m excited to introduce her work to a new audience!
Piper is successful by all measures. She’s a VP at her dad’s real estate development firm. But then she runs into the new security guard. It’s Kyle, her first love. Thirteen years ago, they met as summer camp counselors. But now he doesn’t seem to even remember her name.
The ESA connection: a past/present timeline, a summer romance, a story steeped in nostalgia.
If you like a small town setting, you can also check out my list of books like virgin river:
Low Spice/YA Picks
The emotional territory of first love, summer, and the anguish of a choice not taken is classic YA material. I found a new 2026 YA debut that seems perfect for readers who fell hard for the show.
Last Kiss of Summer by Jessica Felleman (April 2026)
Sera Watkins has spent two summers trying to get over the boy she grew up with through long Cape Cod summers, the one with which friendship almost turned into something more. When Sera arrives back at the Cape determined to protect her heart, she finds that Luke has grown up in all the same painful ways she has. The chemistry from two summers ago is still there. And then comes news that makes her realize she can’t keep waiting for the right moment.
The ESA connection: The Cape Cod summer house, one pivotal night that breaks a budding romance, a reunion that forces the question of whether it’s too late to go back.
- My Master Summer Romance 2026 Post – all the summer books in one place!
- Grab My Summer Romance Reading Guide with a checklist of ALL the summer romances I could find, plus a bingo card, a coloring reading tracker and more!
- Since The May House felt more like women’s fiction, I didn’t include it, but there are great titles on it!
I also have two summer quizzes for you to take, my Find Your Perfect Summer Trope Quiz and my Choose Your Summer Romance Adventure Quiz. Take them both and get book recommendations based on your answ
Looking for more low spice picks with a Carley Fortune feel?
You should check out my list of Books Like The Summer I Turned Pretty, which has both YA and adult picks. All of them have a summery feel, complicated romance, and a strong emotional core.
Have a rec I didn’t include? Drop it in the comments and I’ll add it 📚
