Review of This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

I love the way Fortune builds a summer tableau, but the reasoning for this forbidden love didn't hold up for me, and I was frustrated by a main character's unwillingness to explain the crisis that draws all the characters together.

I thought reading a second Carley Fortune novel might be a nice way to close out the summer, so I went back to her 2024 release, This Summer Will Be Different.

Lucy is a twentysomething from Toronto vacationing in Prince Edward Island and awaiting her best friend Bridget's arrival when she meets Felix, a gorgeous guy serving up oysters at a local restaurant.

But due to various convenient gaps in knowledge on both their parts (confusion about arrival dates, the consistent use of nicknames, and a lack of recent family photos on display on the island and in the city), Felix doesn't realize that Lucy is Bridget's best friend, and Lucy doesn't realize that Felix is Bridget's brother.

And one of Bridget's most important rules was that Lucy not fall in love with her brother.

I love the way Fortune sets a summer tableau, and I really enjoyed the references to Anne of Green Gables in this Prince Edward Island setting.

I like a forbidden-romance setup, but in this instance I was annoyed that Bridget would set up such a bossy rule.--and that Lucy would unquestioningly adhere to it for years. Bridget's former best friend and Felix were serious and broke up, after which the girls lost their friendship. But for twentysomethings this unilateral rule-setting by Bridget felt oppressively controlling and childish.

I also took significant issue with Bridget's histrionics in urgently demanding that Lucy come to PEI from her busy business-owner schedule in Toronto, last-minute and with zero explanation. I had the ungenerous thought that this character had better be dying to call in her chips like this. Bridget's reveal of the situation and her emotional turmoil is repeatedly, excruciatingly delayed, but when the facts are made clear, her vague selfishness and refusal to disclose her issues for so long do not feel in any way justified.

The friends are lovingly dedicated to each other, but their sobbing, dramatic dependence on each other, and long, tear-filled toasts to each other all came off as somewhat over the top to me.

I did enjoy Felix as a love interest, but I didn't think he was given his due in terms of character development.

I listened to an audiobook version of this title.

More Romantic Reads

Carley Fortune is also the author of Meet Me at the Lake, Every Summer After, and One Golden Summer.

You might also like my Bossy reviews of these romantic novels.