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Sadie Soverall stars as Percy Fraser and Matt Cornett plays Sam Florek in Prime’s Every Year After.Cate Cameron/Amazon Prime
Prime Video is turning to Canada for its YA romance fix this summer after the success of series like The Summer I Turned Pretty, Maxton Hall and Off Campus. Every Year After, the series based on Carley Fortune’s debut novel, Every Summer After, is taking young love to the cottage with eight bingeable episodes, now available to stream.
Every Year After stars Sadie Soverall as Percy Fraser, an obit writer who returns to the quaint Barry’s Bay, where she vacationed every summer growing up. Although she’s been away for a few years, the memorial of her former best friend’s mother, Sue Florek (Elisha Cuthbert), finally brings her back.
Sam Florek, the best-friend-turned-lover, is played by Matt Cornett and his older brother, Charlie, is played by Michael Bradway. While one is shocked to see Percy, the other invited her, setting up immediate tension.
Like the novel, the series goes back and forth in time to explore the relationship between Sam and Percy (played in their younger years by Blue Clarke and Juliette Hawk) and how they ended up where they are in the present day. It’s immediately obvious that the friendship turned romantic before it soured, and part of the fun is watching to find out how and why.
While the novel is a jumping-off point, the first season sticks closely to the slow burn between Sam and Percy and builds out its supporting characters in new ways. Abigail Cowen’s Delilah character has a complex backstory involving her marriage, Florek-brothers’ buddy Jordie (Joseph Chiu) is facing a future he never dreamed for himself, and Percy’s ride-or-die Chantal (Aurora Perrineau) is dealing with more than wedding-planning stress when she tags along with Percy to Barry’s Bay.
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The series goes back in time to explore the relationship between Sam and Percy, played by Juliette Hawk and Blue Clarke in the flashbacks.Cate Cameron/Amazon Prime
The result is an extrapolated world that still feels based in the same dreamy cottage life of the book. The pristine shots of the lake, town and forests are the perfect summer-viewing escape, with nostalgic references, music and sets that take you back to a simpler time. (It’s worth noting that the series takes place in a fictional version of Barry’s Bay in B.C., where it was filmed, but the real Barry’s Bay in Ontario is what inspired the novel.)
Set over six summers, Every Year After is at its core a coming-of-age story combined with a young adult romance that asks whether your first love is indeed your soulmate. Showrunner Amy B. Harris’s experience handling compelling female characters on series such as Sex and the City and The Comeback is evident, and Percy is likeable even as her questionable past and choices emerge.
This is a series about yearning and loss rather than straight-up hook-ups and steamy scenes, although there are certainly some of those, too. Expanding the worlds of those aforementioned supporting characters helps to set the pace without too much will-they or won’t-they, as do the flashbacks to previous summers. However, this isn’t a series that’s afraid to wallow in heartbreak before it celebrates love, and for some viewers that may feel too heavy as a summer watch. For others, it might be the relatable escape they’ve been seeking after their own failed romances or thoughts about the one that got away.
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Aurora Perrineau, right, plays Percy’s friend Chantal, while Joseph Chiu plays Jordie, a friend of the Florek brothers.Justine Yeung/Amazon Prime
Meanwhile, these characters have genuine chemistry, and thanks to the story structure, viewers will feel as though they’re growing with them. That structure also means it’s easy to predict where the story is going, but the real fun is in getting there. By the time the big payoffs roll around, you’re already invested.
It’s exactly the type of series Prime Video seems to be going for these days, as it continues investing in its YA universe. Cornett, Bradway, Fortune and Harris are all representing Every Year After at the streamer’s upcoming Obsessed Fest in Los Angeles, where personalities and writers from other series such as Off Campus, Overcompensating and the upcoming Legally Blonde spinoff, Elle, will also appear.
From a Canadian standpoint, it’s just fun to see a series celebrating and representing small-town cottage life on a global stage. Whether tourists flock to the real-life Barry’s Bay in Ontario after watching Every Year After remains to be seen, but just like Fortune’s book, this show perfectly captures a genuine piece of Canadian living and shares the joys of cottage country with the rest of the world.
