From casting fan-favorite characters to expanding the world beyond the pages of Every Summer After, the cast and creative team share how they brought Carley Fortune's bestselling novel to the screen.

Long before Every Year After became a television series, Every Summer After had already found a devoted audience. Since Carley Fortune's bestselling novel was released in 2022, readers have been drawn to its nostalgic love story, told across two timelines as childhood best friends Percy and Sam reunite years after a life-changing falling out. It's a romance built on first loves, missed chances, and the memories that linger long after summer ends.
Now, that beloved novel is making the leap to television with Prime Video's Every Year After. But instead of simply recreating the book scene by scene, the series takes a different approach — expanding the lives of familiar characters, exploring relationships that only briefly appeared on the page, and giving Barry's Bay an even bigger role in the story.
For Fortune, that was always the goal.
"I wanted the heart and soul of the book—the tone and vibe—to be preserved," Fortune shares. "Things will and ought to change with an adaptation. You're not just slapping a book up on screen. You want viewers to feel, if you're a fan of the book, like you're experiencing the book. It should give you the same feelings that the book did."
Ironically, Fortune had always pictured Every Summer After as a film. It wasn't until Amazon pitched the story as a television series that she began to see its possibilities. A longer format, she realized, could give space to characters and storylines that the novel could only hint at.
"I'm really looking forward to them seeing everything that is not in the book," she says. "We have these secondary characters who are almost like little mentions in the book that now have new life and storylines."

Helping bring that vision to life is showrunner Amy B. Harris, who says adapting a bestseller wasn't about finding actors who looked exactly like the descriptions in the novel. It was about finding people who captured the emotional core of each character.
"I felt it was so important to find the essence of the characters that Carly had built," Harris says.
That search led her to British actress Sadie Soverall, who takes on Percy, the fiercely independent young woman whose reunion with her first love drives the story. Harris remembers knowing almost immediately that she had found her lead.
"I couldn't believe it when I saw her," Harris recalls. "I was like, 'This is who Percy is.'"
Finding the right Sam proved just as important. Matt Cornett, who stars opposite Soverall as Percy's childhood best friend and first love, eventually joined her for a chemistry read that Harris still remembers.
"The chemistry between them was just explosive," she says. "It's about two people who start as friends because they're smart, they're thoughtful, they're more sensitive than a lot of the people around them."

For Soverall, stepping into Percy's shoes started with the novel itself. She picked up Every Summer After during the audition process and finished it in a day, quickly understanding why so many readers had connected with Fortune's writing.
"She's so complex. She makes mistakes, she's flawed," Soverall says. "She's also brilliant and creative and loving."
Cornett, meanwhile, only discovered the novel after learning he had been cast as Sam. As he read, he found himself drawn to a character who wears his emotions openly, even when life becomes increasingly complicated.
"At his core, I think he's just this really sweet guy that cares really deeply and loves really hard," Cornett says.
With a devoted fanbase already attached to Percy and Sam, both Soverall and Cornett knew they had to honor what readers already loved about the characters while still bringing a little of themselves to the roles.
"I think you always bring a little bit of yourself into every character you play," Soverall says.
Cornett echoes that sentiment, adding that while he wanted to make Sam his own, it was equally important "to keep these special characters that Carly created" because "they are loved by so many people for a reason."
While Percy and Sam remain at the heart of the story, Every Year After also shines a brighter spotlight on the people around them. Characters who only briefly appeared in the novel are finally given the space to tell stories of their own.

Among them is Chantal, Percy's close friend, played by Aurora Perrineau. Because Chantal mostly appears through phone calls in the book, Perrineau found herself with the rare opportunity to help shape who the character could become on screen while still following the creative vision of Fortune and Harris.
"Chantal is really only phone calls in the book," Perrineau says. "So I kind of got to take some of my own liberties."
The same goes for Jordie, one of Sam's longtime friends, portrayed by Joseph Chiu. Although the novel reveals little about him, Chiu says the series digs much deeper into his personality.
"He's a very chill, laid-back guy," Chiu says, "but he's got a lot of things going on underneath."
Away from the romance and the drama of Barry's Bay, the cast found plenty of their own memories to make. Between filming, it wasn't unusual for everyone to head out for dinner, squeeze in a karaoke night, go dancing, or simply spend hours together by the beach. "Most people weren't just in their trailer," Perrineau recalls. "They were all together.”
Chiu laughs that filming wasn't quite as relaxing for everyone. "Aurora didn't struggle with allergies," he jokes. "But I did."
As if spending a summer in Barry's Bay wasn't dreamy enough, the cast got to bring it to life surrounded by British Columbia's lakes, forests, and postcard-worthy views, giving the cast an environment that often felt remarkably close to the one Fortune first imagined on the page.

Michael Bradway, who portrays Sam's older brother Charlie, says shooting there often felt more like spending a summer at camp than being on a television set.
"It really felt like a summer camp," Bradway says. "We would wake up and go to the lake for work."
For Abigail Cowen, who joins the series as Delilah, the experience was just as surreal. Taking a boat to set each morning quickly became part of the routine.
"I would sit there while we were on the boat and be like, 'This is my job,'" she says with a laugh. "'I get to go act and I get to go on a boat!'"
Of course, the magic of Every Year After isn't just in its love story. It's also in the little details that make Barry's Bay feel like somewhere you could actually spend a summer.
For Harris, bringing Barry's Bay to life was every bit as important as finding the perfect Percy and Sam.
"Barry's Bay is a character, for sure," she says, explaining that everything—from the dock and the lakeshore to how weathered the Adirondack chairs looked—was carefully considered to bring Fortune's world to life across multiple timelines.
Longtime readers will also have plenty to look out for. Alongside expanded storylines and familiar faces, the series is packed with nods to the novel that only fans are likely to catch.
"We worked really hard to continually load in the Easter eggs for the fans," Harris shares.
Whether you're returning to Barry's Bay or discovering it for the first time, Every Year After proves there's still plenty left to explore beyond the pages of Carley Fortune's beloved novel
"People love this book, but I think they're getting so much more than the book," she says. "I can't wait for them to just fully immerse themselves in the world."
All eight episodes of Every Year After are now streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.

The Making of Every Year After: Inside the Cast and Creators' Vision

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