One Golden Summer

by Carley Fortune ★★★★★

It was not until I reached the Acknowledgements section of the book that I discovered that One Golden Summer is technically, in a way, a sequel to author Carly Fortune's first book, Every Summer After. I mention that for two reasons. First, obviously, if you want to start from the start with the full cast of characters, check out Every Summer After before picking up this one. However, I had no idea it was a sequel, and so this one can clearly be enjoyed on its own. The primary characters in this one are connected to those in Every Summer After, and portions of the events of that book are discussed in this one, but it also is fully contained and enjoyable on its own. Talking about this book could potentially spoil some part of Every Summer After (I don't know—I haven't read it!), and so if you want to leave that as pristine as possible, STOP READING NOW!

One Golden Summer opens with our main character, Alice Everly, finishing up a photoshoot. She's an accomplished freelance photographer based in Toronto, but she's burning the candle at both ends. Six months removed from the worst breakup of her life, she's buried herself in work and clients. When her grandmother Nan breaks her hip and is facing a long summer of rehab and recovery, Alice has the idea to spend it with her at an old friend's lake house in the middle of Ontario. The cottage is available all summer, and plans quickly fall into place.

One thing Alice wasn't planning on, though, was Charlie Florek. Alice is put in touch with Charlie, a family friend of the cottage's owner, who suggested Charlie could help with some of the tasks of readying it for their arrival Alice and Charlie get off to a saucy start, first with an awkward call—Alice matter-of-fact and anxious to get down to business, Charlie insisting on starting with basic pleasantries—and later with some persistent good-natured ribbing over text from Charlie. But when Charlie does an over-the-top job of preparing the cottage for their arrival, and Alice can't help but be a little impressed. As is Charlie, with himself. "How impressed are you right now," he writes in a letter he leaves for Nan and Alice. "Text me a picture of your face."

This is Charlie in a nutshell: brash, more than a little arrogant, and supremely confident. We soon find out some of the reason why. When Alice bumps into a captivatingly attractive man at the grocery store, with "pale green eyes, ...a mouth made for kissing, ...and a matching set of dimples...startlingly boyish and sweet," Alice can only come to one conclusion: "He looks like sex." She fumbles her way out of the store without introducing herself, but later runs into him out on the lake. And, of course, that shockingly handsome man is none other than Charlie Florek. He also works in finance in Toronto and drives a flashy Porsche around Barry's Bay. Charlie's a catch, and he knows it. But he also happens to be a lot sweeter than his cocksure veneer, from taking Nan to choir practice and Euchre night to building an over-the-top treehouse for his niece- or nephew-to-be. As Alice says at one point, "I look out at the lake, thinking about when I first realized there was so much more to Charlie than provocation and pectorals." Fortune makes him a bit too good to be true, but it still works.

There have been thousands of books rhapsodizing the summer romance, and so it's well-trodden ground that Fortune attempts to traverse. However, she manages to create a character-driven tale of friendship that also happens to have a magnetic romantic pull in the middle. Both Charlie and Alice are a little broken, and the thought of a relationship is too pressure-packed for either. So, despite their obvious mutual attraction, they set that aside (for a while) and form a deep and meaningful friendship first. "Good things happen at the lake," was always Nan's daily mantra when she and Alice visited in the past, and the summer with Charlie and Nan and the lake is just what Alice needs to get back on track. There is, of course, conflict that arises, and while it's a bit manufactured, that blip is overshadowed by the authenticity of the relationship that Alice and Charlie develop. It feels more real than your average summer romance (or romance novel), and it's fun to be swept along as we watch them fall in love.

It's a top-of-the-genre romance, and justified in its surprising (to me at the time) selection among Amazon's Best Books of the Year So Far, supplanting perennial chart-topper Emily Henry and her latest Great Big Beautiful Life. I like Henry's latest quite a bit; I liked this one even a bit more. Certainly worth a read.