In mid-July that year, I had a very strong and sudden desire to write a book. I’m not a spiritual person at all (even the om in a yoga class makes me feel weird), but the force at which this urge hit me was unlike anything I’ve felt before or since. It was an epiphany, my one and only Oprah Winfrey–worthy Aha Moment.
I think you’ll be able to tell after reading Every Summer After how nostalgic I was feeling when I wrote it. It’s no coincidence that I was living by the lake in the corner of the world where I grew up when I began the manuscript. I wanted to pay tribute to shimmering water and dense bush, to skies that stretch endlessly and the storms that light them up in the dark. I wanted friendship bracelets and drippy ice cream cones. I wanted to escape 2020 and retreat into the best of my childhood summers.
I’m mildly embarrassed to admit that for a long stretch of my adulthood, reading seemed more like a chore than a break from reality. As an editor, I read for work all day, and the idea of looking at more words in my slivers of downtime was completely unappealing. I could barely stand to pick up a book. I wish I could remember precisely which one started me on a roll of reading women’s fiction and romance and young adult novels a few years ago. I’d like to know so I could track down the author and thank her with all of my heart. It could have been Christina Lauren or Colleen Hoover or Jenny Han or Angie Thomas or Emily Henry or Tahereh Mafi or Sally Thorne or Nicola Yoon or Helen Hoang. Or many, many others. What I do know is that once I started, I couldn’t stop. I went from reading a handful of books a year to downing several a week.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think the editor part of my brain was figuring out how these books worked—what the narrative beats were and where they fell in the story, what kinds of characters I find intriguing, how authors keep a reader engaged from beginning to end. I had been studying the elements of a novel without realizing how hard I’d been cramming. I have a journalism degree, not a formal background in creative writing, but I consider the time I spent—and continue to spend—as a deeply engaged reader as my education.
Before I set fingers to keyboard, I knew I wanted to tell a love story, and I knew I wanted it to have a happy ending. (In 2020, a happy ending was the only kind I could stomach.) I wanted the central relationship to span many years and capture all the hormone-fueled angst and excitement of being a teenager, and the heaviness we live with as adults. I wanted to explore the incredible feeling of finding your person, that friend who gets you like no one else does, who makes you feel seen and safe and sparkly.
I also wanted to write about people who screw up but who ultimately try their best to do better. The characters in this book are all flawed. (Except maybe for Sue. I’m pretty sure Sue is perfection.) I hope that makes them all the more compelling. I’m personally drawn to protagonists like Percy and Sam, who grapple with their own shortcomings, who face obstacles both external and internal. For some readers, Percy’s betrayal will be unforgivable. And yet Sam does forgive her. But this acceptance doesn’t come easy; their happy ending is hard-earned.
Most of all, I wanted to write the kind of book I like to devour, the kind of book that gave me back my love of reading several years ago. Writing Every Summer After was an escape for me. I hope reading it was for you as well.