Our Perfect Storm

by Carley Fortune ★★★★☆

Frankie and George have been best friends since they were nine-years-old. Mid-childhood trauma left both with gaping parental holes, and they turned to each other for support, forging an unbreakable friendship that is the most important thing to each of them.

After establishing their early connection, the novel fast-forwards to the present, where Frankie is at her rehearsal dinner, anxiously awaiting George's arrival. No, she's not marrying her best friend; she's marrying Nate, a man she met less than a year earlier, and she's tapped George to be her best man. When at last he arrives, looking like a real-life version of Superman, there's an immediate buoyancy to Frankie, and when they share a dance together, their connection is undeniable. Nate, meanwhile, is the least jealous man on the planet, and wholly unbothered by his fiancée's gorgeous best friend. Everything is lining up for a perfect wedding...until Frankie wakes up to a note on her pillow the next morning, Nate's handwriting on the hotel's stationary: "I love you, but I can't marry you."

While the couple had planned a few days together after the wedding, the true honeymoon was booked two months later, a week-long vacation in Tofino on Vancouver Island. Frankie wallows in her heartbreak for the months following the wedding; George is traveling for work, but as the date of the partially-paid-for. non-refundable honeymoon approaches, George returns and suggests they go together. "I stare at him a moment longer and then I realize what a gift this could be. How much I need a shake-up. I've been stuck in limbo for the last two months, and here is a chance to be released. An adventure. An opportunity to finally travel together. A week to get our friendship back on solid ground."

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN ON THE HONEYMOON? There's little mystery to what's coming in this one. The primary conundrum is "what took these two so long to act on what was obvious to everyone and to them"? And that's where the book falls just a bit short. These are no ordinary friends; they have been joined at the hip since age nine. They have lived together. They know what the other is thinking (allegedly). They finish each other's sentences. They're both each other's favorite person. And they're both wildly attracted to the other physically. There is, of course, the age-old trope of not wishing to put their friendship at risk, and perhaps one could accept that their belief is so powerful that they would never explore a relationship before this point. But like with People We Meet on Vacation, it needed something more to reinforce why they'd avoided their mutual attraction for so long.

Frankie can be more than a little difficult and unwittingly callous at times, but George is as patient as flawless as leading men come. His saintly devotion is tested more than once, but we all know how this one must end up in the end. Aside from the insufficiently explained reasons for their reluctance, it's a touching love story of two best friends finally coming to their senses. Satsifying, despite its minor flaws.

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Quick Facts

• Title: Our Perfect Storm

• Author: Carley Fortune

• Publisher: Berkley

• Release Date: May 5, 2026

• Format: Audiobook

• ISBN-13: 978-0593953235

• Pages: 420