Every Year After Review: 6 Summers, A Heartbreak, and the Best Romance on Prime Video Right Now

I’ll be honest, I almost skipped Every Year After entirely. Another YA romance, another lake town, another friends-to-lovers setup that I’ve seen a dozen times before? I figured I’d give it one episode and move on. But here I am, eight episodes later, staring at my ceiling, emotionally wrecked in the best possible way. This Every Year After review comes from someone who started skeptical and ended up completely, unexpectedly invested and I’ve also put together a full Every Year After episode guide below so you know exactly what you’re getting into before you hit play.

Premiering on June 10, 2026, Every Year After is an eight-episode Prime Video series based on Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel Every Summer After, a book that spent 16 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and sold over a million copies, largely fuelled by the BookTok community. The adaptation stars Sadie Soverall (Saltburn) and Matt Cornett (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) as Percy and Sam, two people tangled in a love story that spans years, seasons, and a sea of complicated choices. So, should you clear your weekend for it? Let me walk you through everything.

Story Overview (Spoiler-Free)

It’s a dual-timeline second-chance romance set in a dreamy lake town, and it hits harder than you’d expect.

The series opens in Seattle, where we meet Persephone “Percy” Fraser (Sadie Soverall), a woman who has quietly built a life with very deliberate walls around it. Percy receives word that Sue Florek, the warm, kind woman who was like a second mother to her during her teenage summers, has passed away from cancer. To attend the funeral in Barry’s Bay, the idyllic Canadian lake town where Percy spent the most defining summers of her life, she’d have to see him. Sam Florek (Matt Cornett). Her first love. The person she walked away from years ago without ever fully explaining why.

What follows is a beautifully constructed dual-timeline story, exactly the kind of emotionally rich drama series that Prime Video has been quietly building a reputation for. The show bounces between two eras: the present day, where a guarded adult Percy navigates grief, reunion, and resurfacing feelings, and the past, stretching across six summers from 2011 to 2016, where we watch Percy and Sam fall together (and then apart) in real time.

Barry’s Bay isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character in itself. The shimmering lake, the worn wooden docks, the local diner, the bonfires on the beach, everything about this setting wraps the show in a warm, hazy glow that makes you nostalgic for summers you may never have even had. The show never telegraphs exactly what went wrong between Percy and Sam in the past, which gives it a genuinely compelling mystery thread alongside its romance. You keep watching not just because you want them together, but because you need to understand what broke them.

Where First Love Lives Forever – My Every Year After Review

Bottom line upfront: If you loved The Summer I Turned Pretty, Normal People, or any show about yearning and the weight of your own choices, this one will get under your skin.

I genuinely wasn’t prepared for how much Every Year After would resonate with me emotionally. The show isn’t flashy. It doesn’t have big dramatic twists or shocking plot turns. What it has is texture, a slow-burn ache that builds across episodes until you realize you’ve been holding your breath for the last thirty minutes.

The dual timeline is where the series truly shines. Watching the past unfold, young Percy discovering herself, learning to swim across the lake, falling in love almost by accident, felt genuinely tender and alive. There’s a specific episode midway through the season where the timeline collision between past joy and present regret is handled with such quiet precision that I actually had to pause and collect myself.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the show’s emotional intelligence. Percy and Sam aren’t perfect people. They make choices that are frustrating, sometimes even selfish, but the writing treats their flaws with nuance rather than judgment. I never found myself hating either of them, even when I wanted to shake them. That’s a difficult balance to achieve in a romance, keeping your leads sympathetic while letting them be genuinely complicated human beings.

Is it perfect? No. The first couple of episodes are a bit slow, and there are moments where the pacing drags in the present-day timeline. But once the show hits its stride, roughly around episode three – it becomes the kind of thing you watch until your eyes hurt because stopping feels like abandonment.

The atmosphere here is everything. The Every Year After friends-to-lovers series 2026 leans hard into nostalgia, and it works. The soundtrack is an absolute highlight, featuring artists like Lana Del Rey and Dolly Parton, it underscores every emotionally charged scene with exactly the right amount of ache.

Acting & Direction

Sadie Soverall carries the emotional weight of this series on her shoulders, and she’s more than capable of it. Fresh off her memorable turn in Saltburn, she brings a layered, grounded quality to Percy that keeps the character from ever feeling like a rom-com trope. Her present-day Percy is brittle and controlled in a way that makes complete sense once the past timeline fills in the details, and watching Soverall shift between the two versions of her character is genuinely impressive work.

Matt Cornett, for his part, makes Sam warm and earnest in a way that’s easy to fall for. Critics have noted that the chemistry between Soverall and Cornett is palpable, a look from either actor does the work of a line of dialogue and I completely agree. Their dynamic is electric in the past timeline and charged with something heavier, more loaded, in the present. The Every Year After Sadie Soverall Matt Cornett chemistry is a real draw, and the show knows it.

The supporting cast deserves a loud shout-out. Aurora Perrineau as Chantal brings warmth and wit as Percy’s best friend, and Abigail Cowen (Fate: The Winx Saga, who previously acted alongside Soverall) brings an interesting edge to Delilah, a character who doesn’t entirely trust Percy’s return to Barry’s Bay. Elisha Cuthbert appears in a recurring role as Sue Florek, and she brings a quiet, emotional gravity to what could have easily been a minor character.

Direction across the eight episodes is assured and atmospheric. Gillian Robespierre, Tara Nicole Weyr, and Jeffrey W. Byrd handle the series with visual warmth, sun-drenched and golden in the past, more muted and melancholy in the present. It’s a deliberate, effective contrast. Showrunner Amy B. Harris (of Sex and the City fame) adapts Fortune’s novel with a genuine love for its material, expanding and deepening characters that the book touched on more lightly.

What I Liked About Series ‘Every Year After’

• The dual-timeline storytelling is smartly constructed. Rather than playing it as a gimmick, the show uses the structure to build emotional suspense and deepen your understanding of both characters with every passing episode.
• The performances, especially Soverall’s, are the backbone of the whole thing. She makes every quiet scene count.
• Barry’s Bay as a setting is a genuine scene-stealer. Filmed in British Columbia (on Bowen Island, a 20-minute ferry ride from Vancouver), it has that unmistakable cottage-country quality, familiar and dreamy at once.
• The supporting ensemble is charming and well-written, giving the show texture and life beyond just the central romance.
• The soundtrack has an absolute vibe. Lana Del Rey and Dolly Parton in the same show? Yes, it works. Somehow, it really works.
• The emotional intelligence of the writing. This is one of those rare book adaptations that actually honours what made the source material special, unlike some adaptations that take more creative liberties (if you’re curious about how Off Campus handled its own book changes, we covered that in detail)
• The binge-worthy format. All eight episodes drop at once, and the show is structured in a way that makes it almost impossible to stop at a natural break point.

What I Didn’t Like

• The slow start. The first two episodes prioritize setup over momentum, and the present-day timeline in particular can feel a bit morose and difficult to connect with until you have more context from the flashbacks.
• Age perception. Asking the audience to believe adult actors are convincingly 15 or 16-year-old teenagers is a stretch that the show doesn’t quite manage. It’s a suspension of disbelief speed bump that’s worth mentioning.
• Percy’s present-day passivity. While her emotional withdrawal makes narrative sense, the adult Percy spends a little too much time as a “shell of her former self,” and the show takes a beat too long to let her spark come back.
• Some underdeveloped side arcs. A few supporting characters get storylines that feel like they’re building toward something and then quietly resolve without the payoff they seemed to be setting up.

Every Year After Web Series Rating

Overall JWS Rating: 8.2 / 10 ⭐

Every Year After is not trying to reinvent the romantic drama wheel. What it does instead is execute a deeply human love story with care, atmosphere, and strong performances and in doing that, it earns its emotional payoff completely. For more JWS verdicts like this one, browse all our web series reviews, we publish new ones every week.

Should You Watch Every Year After?

Watch it if: You enjoy slow-burn romance, nostalgia-drenched storytelling, or dual-timeline narratives. If you’ve read Carley Fortune’s novel, you’ll likely love seeing the world of Barry’s Bay come to life. If you enjoyed The Summer I Turned Pretty or Normal People, this sits comfortably in that same emotional neighbourhood.

Skip it if: You need fast pacing from the jump, have no patience for characters making frustrating choices, or prefer action-driven plots. This is a quiet, emotionally interior show, if that’s not your thing right now, it won’t convert you.

Is Every Year After worth watching on Prime Video? Absolutely, yes, especially for romance fans who appreciate character depth over melodrama. It’s the kind of series that stays with you after the credits roll and if you’re always hunting for the next great watch, our curated romantic dramas on streaming list is a good place to start.

Key Highlights

• 8 episodes, all available to binge from June 10, 2026,makes for a perfect weekend binge on Prime Video
• Based on Carley Fortune’s debut novel Every Summer After, which spent 16 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list and sold 1 million+ copies
• Filmed in British Columbia, Canada, primarily on Bowen Island
• Story spans 6 summers (2011-2016) plus a present-day timeline
• Had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 8, 2026
• Debuted with a 78% score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics
• Features a standout soundtrack including Lana Del Rey and Dolly Parton
• Available on Prime Video in 240+ countries and territories worldwide, per the official series announcement“
• Starring Sadie Soverall (Saltburn), Matt Cornett, Aurora Perrineau, Abigail Cowen, and Elisha Cuthbert

Every Year After Episode Guide – All 8 Episodes Listed

Short answer: All 8 episodes of Every Year After drop at once on Prime Video on June 10, 2026. Here’s a breakdown of every episode title and what each one covers.

One of the things that makes this show so bingeable is how cleverly each episode is titled — every name is a nod to what’s unfolding emotionally, not just plot-literally. Here’s your complete Every Year After episode guide for Season 1:

Each episode runs approximately 45-55 minutes, making this a very comfortable one-day binge if you’re so inclined. And trust me, once you hit episode four, you will be.

Conclusion

At the end of my Every Year After Prime Video binge, what surprised me most was how much I cared. I came in with mild expectations and left with a full heart and a playlist I’ll be listening to for the rest of the summer. It’s not a perfect show, the pacing takes time to find its footing, and there are rough edges here and there, but at its core, it’s exactly what a good romantic drama should be: emotionally honest, beautifully performed, and built around a love story that feels worth rooting for.

The Carley Fortune book adaptation has been handled with genuine respect for its source material, and in a streaming landscape full of half-hearted YA attempts, that actually matters. Whether you’ve read the novel or are coming to Barry’s Bay completely fresh, Every Year After offers something rare, a summer romance that earns its tears. And if you’re looking for what else is worth your time this week, check out the latest theatrical releases this week on Just Web Series.”

Stream it. Clear your afternoon. Bring snacks.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)