It’s hard to compete with the magic of a teenage summer, which Carley Fortune takes on in One Golden Summer. While not as swoonworthy as its predecessor Every Summer After, One Golden Summer still feels like a romantic escape to the lake. Check out my One Golden Summer review below!
My One Golden Summer Review
There’s nothing quite like those teenage summers. There’s a kind of magic to summer as a teenager–not weighed down by adult responsibilities, new love hanging in the air. It’s why it’s such a fruitful area for storytelling that works time and time again. The Summer I Turned Pretty, Dirty Dancing, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants–there are so many. And one of the most successful of these stories in romance novels has been Every Summer After by Carley Fortune. A second chance romance and a love triangle between brothers, it’s pure summer magic in book form. The book was so successful, Fortune is revisiting the world of Barry’s Bay here. This time, she’s giving Charlie Florek, the older of those two brothers, his summer in the sun. Relentlessly flirtatious Charlie is all charm, and I couldn’t wait to see how his love story would unfold.
Freelance photographer Alice is taking the summer away to care for her grandmother. Needing a change of pace, Alice rents the lake home of a childhood friend in Barry’s Bay. The caretaker, Charlie, immediately catches Alice’s eye with his flirtatious charm. But more than that, Alice recognizes Charlie from a photograph she took when she spent the summer in Barry’s Bay at 17. The photo of Charlie, his brother Sam, and their friend Percy launched Alice’s career as a photographer. As Alice spends time with Charlie, she finds that behind his charismatic persona is a deeply emotional and wounded person who people don’t always take seriously. She, too, has walls up around her emotions as she has spent so much of her life being a people pleaser and the one behind the camera–it’s time for Alice to figure out what she really wants and how to own it. But will both Charlie and Alice be able to get past those walls to find each other before summer ends?
The star of the show here is Charlie, through and through. Having been introduced in Every Summer After, Charlie Florek is a character that feels bigger than the page. He’s hot, sexy, flirtatious, funny, charming, but also warm hearted and flawed. Like catnip to women, he’s a wounded person behind all those big personality traits. He overcompensates for the hurt he feels having lost his dad at a young age by being the life of the party. But it’s also clear that he’s a really deep character and that hurt springs deeply for him.
Although this book is not written from his POV, he dominates this story. It’s easy to root for a wounded, well intentioned character like Charlie to find his way. He only has eyes for Alice from the moment they meet, which also is so appealing. And his mistakes and flaws that were clear in Every Summer After feel evolved here for Charlie as an adult. Charlie is grappling with being the same age his father was when he died, which is both common and worth exploring.
The problem here is that in some ways Charlie overshadows the actual main character of the book, Alice. Her journey to self discovery and feeling comfortable in her own skin, while grounded, just doesn’t feel as exciting. They’re a good match for each other, but in everything Alice just reads as a bit more dull than Charlie. They balance each other out, but it’s also a bit difficult to have the main character of the book be the less interesting of the two characters.
As in Every Summer After, both Barry’s Bay and the feeling of summer are very much alive in One Golden Summer. Fortune evokes both time and place, in a similar way to Elin Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels. Her experience in Barry’s Bay makes it come to life. Having been less of a fan of her two novels since Every Summer After, I was happy to have her come back to this place she knows and loves so well.
Sam and Percy both make appearances here, though their roles are more muted. Still, it’s nice to see them progressing in their relationship and to catch up with them. The scenes with Alice and Percy in particular are welcome. Percy gives off a cool girl/girl next door energy that helps warm up Alice quite a bit.
While I really did enjoy this book, I still feel Every Summer After remains my favorite of Fortune’s books. It’s hard to compete with that teenage summer yearning, though this book does have a fun theme of Alice pursuing the 17 year old summer she wished she’d had. This book definitely feels more adult and with that it just isn’t quite as magical. Still–Charlie is a very memorable character in both books, and there’s joy in seeing his love story get the full spotlight.
My One Golden Summer Rating
4.25 out of 5 stars
My Romance Recipe Pairing
One Golden Summer is a toast to lazy summers at the lake as much as anything else. So let’s give summer a toast too by pairing it with my Frozen Banana Coconut Ginger Cocktails! So refreshing!!
One Golden Summer Synopsis
Synopsis (from Amazon)
I never anticipated Charlie Florek.
Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer there at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.
Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.
Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.
Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.
Buy your copy of One Golden Summer for Kindle here
