Less than a month after the premiere of the Off Campus phenomenon, Prime Video has just released its new literary adaptation. Every Summer After probably won’t create the same buzz as its predecessor, but it’s an honest distraction for fans of the genre who have been left adrift after finishing the hockey series.

• Every Summer After | Check out the trailer and poster for Prime Video’s new romance

The adaptation of Every Summer After, by Carley Fortune, follows the relationship between Percy Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett) as they reunite for the first time ten years after a traumatic breakup. While showing the couple reconnecting, the series created by Amy B. Harris and Leila Gerstein also goes back in time to show how they got together in the first place, as well as the main reason that led to their split.

It’s a dynamic that hooks you right away. There’s a clear tension between the protagonists, and the series builds solid suspense that keeps the viewer coming up with theories about what brought them to this point. And even with all that curiosity about the past, the flashbacks never overshadow the present. More than that, the current timeline remains the most interesting one to follow.

Perhaps the biggest reason for that is the characters’ maturity. At 28, with stable careers, Sam and Percy no longer have much time for games. They do have a few obstacles between them (Sam has been dating another woman for a few years and is even planning to propose), but the characters actually talk things through and don’t fall into obvious clichés.

That said, this doesn’t happen all the time, especially with the characters and storylines around them. Every Summer After also introduces us to Sam’s older brother, Charlie (Michael Bradway), Percy’s former friend, Delilah (Abigail Cowen), her current best friend, Chantal (Aurora Perrineau), and the boys’ friend, Jordie (Joseph Chiu).

At first, Charlie and Sam fight a lot over very little, Delilah seems intent on sabotaging Percy over petty issues, and Chantal is too wrapped up in her own problems. They seem to be there just to fill screen time. But thankfully, that dynamic changes after episode four. The supporting characters gain more depth, and their actions become more justified.

There’s a great scene about female friendship in episode four, along with valuable lessons about healthy relationships and finding your own independence in Delilah and Chantal’s storylines. At the same time, Matt Cornett and Michael Bradway work really well together, with that honest sibling dynamic where they can be cursing each other out one moment, then come together and be inseparable the next.

And that’s exactly why the story’s big plot twist can be so frustrating. The series does the best it can with the main storyline provided by Carley Fortune’s source material — which has divided readers since its release in 2022 — but it’s such a 2000s-style twist that it makes you roll your eyes, and it doesn’t fit the characters as they’ve been built up to that point. Even if it happened ten years earlier.

It’s just a shame that all the anticipation is built around such a weak reveal, and that it dictates the entire ending of the series, from the relationships between the characters themselves to the viewer’s own relationship with them. The feeling is like that disappointed look from a parent, which hurts much more than being yelled at.

In the end, Every Summer After winds up being sabotaged by its own story. The strong chemistry between the actors, a soundtrack that would make The Summer I Turned Pretty jealous, and even the well-written dialogue can’t save what was already a frustration before the adaptation even began. But at least Gerstein and Harris’s series makes an effort.

Depois Daquele Ano

Created by: Leila Gerstein e Amy Harris

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