8 episodes put Every Year After under the romance spotlight

Barry’s Bay arrives on screen as a place of lake swims, old notebooks, tavern memories and one relationship that refuses to stay buried. Prime Video’s Every Year After brings Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After to television with Sadie Soverall as Percy Fraser and Matt Cornett as Sam Florek. The first season has eight episodes, released together, and the early response is split between dreamy summer nostalgia and frustration over a romance weighed down by misery.

How Events Unfolded

The series begins with Percy Fraser, a 28-year-old obituary writer, far from the Canadian lakeside town that shaped her teenage years. She has not been back to Barry’s Bay since her split with Sam Florek, the boy next door who became her first love.

The trigger for her return is Sue Florek’s death. Sue, played by Elisha Cuthbert, was Sam and Charlie’s mother and close enough to Percy to feel like family. News of the memorial brings Percy’s anxiety rushing back, so her best friend Chantal, played by Aurora Perrineau, takes time off work and comes with her.

From there, the show moves between the present-day week in Barry’s Bay and summers from Percy’s youth. Those flashbacks track her friendship with Sam through horror movies, lake swims, friendship bracelets, restaurant shifts and the gradual shift from safe friendship to first love.

For Australian viewers, the supplied release material lists all eight episodes arriving together, with local timing at 5pm AEST for NSW, Victoria, Queensland, the ACT and Tasmania; 4:30pm ACST for South Australia and the Northern Territory; and 3pm AWST for Western Australia.

Critical Details

The adaptation comes from creators Amy B. Harris and Leila Gerstein, and it sits inside Prime Video’s run of romance-driven book adaptations. The supplied material connects it with recent streaming appetite around titles such as The Summer I Turned Pretty, Off Campus and the My Fault series.

The central hook is not just whether Percy and Sam still love each other. It is why one mistake could cut them off for a decade, and whether Barry’s Bay represents a wound, a home, or both. That gives the show two engines: a slow-burn romance and a memory puzzle.

The will storyline adds a sharper edge to the grief plot. Sue leaves the tavern and everything inside it to Percy, while most of the estate goes to her sons. That choice lands like a family argument disguised as a legal event, forcing Sam and Charlie to confront how much Percy still belonged to their mother’s life.

Reactions & Responses

The response in the supplied reviews is sharply divided. One reading sees the show as a sun-drenched romance with nostalgia, heartbreak and enough emotional depth to lift it beyond a standard teen love story. Another finds the central relationship too dour, arguing that the series leans so hard into heartbreak that it forgets to make the romance feel irresistible.

That split is useful for viewers. If you are coming for soft-focus summer memories, first-love ache, lake-town settings and a full-season binge, the show is built for that. If you need fast plotting or a couple whose chemistry immediately justifies years of pain, the early criticism suggests the series may test your patience.

Music also shapes the mood. The supplied reviews mention a melancholy pop soundtrack including Gracie Abrams, Lana Del Rey and Noah Cyrus, while another review points to Lana Del Rey and Dolly Parton. The show is not hiding its emotional register: it wants viewers inside Percy’s longing, regret and unfinished business.

All I wanted was to be a cardiologist so I could fix people’s hearts, but after all the studying, I finally realized that you can’t really save someone from heartbreak

Putting It in Perspective

Every Year After arrives at a time when romance novels with big online fandoms are becoming ready-made streaming bets. A bestselling book brings existing readers, and a binge release gives fans the chance to compare every major scene, character change and emotional beat immediately.

For Australian audiences, the practical appeal is simple: this is a same-evening binge rather than a weekly appointment. The timing gives east coast viewers the first season around dinner time, while Western Australia gets it mid-afternoon.

The bigger question is whether the show can become more than a reader-fandom event. The Summer I Turned Pretty comparison is unavoidable in the supplied material, but Every Year After has a different shape: it is less about a triangle and more about what happens when one relationship becomes the emotional centre of someone’s life for too long.

Looking Ahead

What is confirmed is the first-season release: eight episodes on Prime Video, based on Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After. The show follows Percy and Sam through six summers, a decade of silence, Sue’s death, the return to Barry’s Bay and the question of whether a second chance is possible.

There is no confirmation in the supplied material that a second season has been ordered. The next signal will likely come from how strongly the binge performs with book fans, romance viewers and people comparing the adaptation to the novel.