One Golden Summer

"🎧 If you liked Every Summer After, you’ll like Charlie and Alice’s story. A great summer friendship/near-romance and all that follows. 🫶🏻"

"Love Charlie and Alice’s story so much, a cute summer read "

"Probably the best book I’ve read this year ❤️. I had mixed feelings about Every Summer After so I was hesitant to pick this one up but it’s so much better and gives Charlie his HEA after being a complicated character in the first book. Alice and Charlie’s love story is perfect. "

"Another awesome book by Carley Fortune! Love how she tied in a previous book. Such a cute story with a great ending, and a couple “morals” to learn throughout. "

"Great audiobook. Enjoyed the story I appreciate that it felt realistic but still a nice about of cheesy (which is what I read these books for). "

"Cheesy love story . Very predictable. Great for young readers perhaps."

"Cute story and remarkable characters!"

"5/5"

"1.5 stars, rounded up to 2. <br/><br/>This is going to be long-winded, but I feel like I have to share my thoughts on this book, and more generally on Fortune’s books, somewhere. <br/><br/>Let’s start with Every Summer After. I devoured it. Seriously, like read-in-one-sitting kind of devoured. The characters, their lives and stories, the setting(!!), it all just pulled me in. It was sweet, endearing, summery, nostalgic, and a beautiful coming-of-age and second-chance-at-love story. It flowed. It was an immediate 5 star for me. Upon reflection, there is actually a lot of it that I didn’t like (namely the twist revealed later in the book). However, I kept my initial 5 star rating, because I try to judge based on how the book made me feel when I read it. <br/><br/>I was excited to read Fortune’s next books after ESA. Neither of them worked for me, whatsoever. (Particularly did not like Meet Me at the Lake). I don’t remember where I read an interview with the author herself and she described how writing ESA flowed naturally to her, and this book was clunkier to write. Unfortunately, this translated into the finished product. It lacked the original magic and felt forced / formulaic. I didn’t find her third book, This Summer Will be Different, to be well, any different (sorry I had to).<br/><br/>Ok, onto this book. *SPOILERS AHEAD * (sorry tag not working) <br/><br/>Some positives:<br/><br/>-I will say that the Barry’s Bay setting is definitely the setting that Fortune does best. Her middle two books attempted to create that summer magic in other locations, but they fell flat to me. <br/><br/>-Charlie is a fun character. He was fun to read about in ESA and it’s nice to get a deeper look at him now, as an adult.<br/><br/>-I appreciated hearing his POV about his role in ESA. While it was brief, it was kind of nice closure for that original saga.<br/><br/>What I did NOT like:<br/><br/>- As many reviewers mentioned, the characters felt ridiculously young. They did not read as credible 30-somethings to me, whatsoever. They spoke and acted like they were teenagers. Generally speaking, Fortune’s work feels very YA. <br/><br/>-The personalities of almost all characters were so one-dimensional and almost caricatures. Of course Alice’s ex bf was uptight and only liked cream furniture, and never made her smile, and insisted on fancy dinner parties and liked her wild hair in a severe bun etc etc. There was no nuance. Then we have the sister who is a lawyer. That’s all that’s needs to be said because that seems to define her personality and every interaction or moment she is mentioned. The dad is also a lawyer and has the same personality as the daughter (who is a lawyer in case you missed that). <br/><br/>-the pacing also felt very odd to me. From a literary structure pov - what was the climax? The accident? The nonsensical breakup? The heart surgery? So many random dramatic things seemed thrown together, and to me, it felt like a choppy ride.<br/><br/>- In the end, a good romance book will always come down to the “buy-in” you have for the main characters and their love story. Charlie and Alice just didn’t do it for me. Charlie is a described (and self proclaimed - over and over and over) as a player/womanizer type of guy, yet we are meant to believe that from a one second encounter with Alice he was just all in, and knew she was *different*. This is someone who we know has been with countless beautiful women. He is described as strikingly handsome, and has a successful career as well. He is also 35 years old. I just didn’t buy his immediate obsession with Alice, particularly when nothing seemed to stand out about her. <br/><br/>- Continuing on from the above point, Charlie came on insanely strong. Maybe some find that cute / sweet / attractive, but I’m just not in that camp. Baking her a fancy cake almost immediately after meeting her, driving hours to do errands or family pickups, the list goes on. Hanging up on her family members when he was completely new to the dynamic and didn’t know Alice well at all yet!! It really just seemed like it came out of nowhere and was based on some initial attraction. He was also flirting with her from the initial phone call, before he had any idea who she was. Tbh these behaviours seem more like red-flag love-bombs to me, than devoted acts of service. <br/><br/>-Alice’s overall personality and character felt lacklustre and underdeveloped. I’m not really sure what her issue was. She didn’t have friends at 17 and was shy? She was lost in a big family? She needed to learn to be selfish? I just am not sure what her arc was even supposed to be. <br/><br/>-the actual breakup made zero sense. He was having heart surgery (not to minimize this), but he didn’t have a terminal illness. There was no normal communication. Again, these are not middle-schoolers. Ignoring texts, avoiding each other - it all seemed so silly and contrived. Basic communication and simple conversation would have avoided all the drama. It really did not feel credible. <br/><br/>-lastly, the cliches and predictability were so over the top. Nan and the old friend - that was obvious from the first mention of him. The heart issue was also predictable. The ending (Charlie leaving his job to work as an executive for heart disease research ? Seriously ??) was just more of the same.<br/><br/>I think I may be done with Fortune’s books at this point. Unfortunately, she seems to be a one hit wonder for me, so I’ll give the next inevitable May-release summer romance a pass (no matter how beautiful I’m sure the cover will be!)."

"The perfect way to start my summer, and honestly Carley Fortune's best book yet!"