Every Year After Review: A Charming Supporting Cast Heats Up Prime Video’s Lukewarm Summer Romance

Canadian romance is having a moment right now. Last year's smash sleeper hit Heated Rivalry framed the Great White North as not only the perfect place to "come to the cottage" but also to fall in love, while Prime Video's recent Off Campus, though set in the United States, is based on a hugely popular book series by Canadian author Elle Kennedy.

Adding to the TV phenomenon of Canadian romance is another offering from Prime Video, Every Year After. Releasing all eight episodes of its first season on June 10, Every Year After is the first adaptation from New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune. Its source material, Every Summer After, is Fortune's debut novel, and follows the friends-to-lovers, second-chance romance of Persephone "Percy" Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett).

Every Year After tells a dual timeline story, jumping back and forth from Percy and Sam's first six summers together to their very uncomfortable present. As seen in the past storyline, Percy meets Sam when they're teenagers, after her family buys a summer home next to his in the close-knit cottage town of Barry's Bay, British Columbia. They begin as friends before their relationship blossoms into a sweet teen romance, only for things to go heartbreakingly south.

In the present, Percy is a miserable obituary writer living in Seattle and clinging to a shameful secret surrounding her breakup with Sam. Percy swore she would never go back to Barry's Bay, but when Charlie (Michael Bradway) calls to tell her that his and Sam's mother, Sue (Elisha Cuthbert), has passed away, Percy returns to pay her respects to her "second mom," and is forced to confront the deep feelings she still has for her first love.

Percy and Sam are no Shane and Ilya, and the show's Barry's Bay is more generically idyllic than a full-blown summer fantasy — a major disappointment for readers, as the settings of Fortune's books are practically characters themselves. (The fact that Every Year After is set in BC, as opposed to the real-life Barry's Bay, Ontario, where Fortune grew up and where Every Summer After takes place, is maddening.) However, Every Year After's supporting cast has charm to burn, and makes the series a summer romance to remember.

Percy & Sam’s Sweet Friends-To-Lovers Teen Romance (Almost) Makes Up For Their Lackluster Present

When Percy and Sam first reconnect in the present timeline, tensions are high, to say the least. Percy is harboring guilt from the past and fears hurting Sam, while Sam is mourning his mother and is confused and angry at his ex's return after a decade away. These are a lot of messy emotions, so it's not a surprise that neither character knows quite how to proceed. However, Soverall and Cornett's performances initially come across more as wooden acting than complicated discomfort.

It's not a great start, but fortunately, the young versions of Percy (an ebullient Juliette Hawk) and Sam (a very sweet Blue Carke) buoy Every Year After with the kind of earnest bubbliness only possible in early teenhood. It's easy to see why these two fall for each other, both as best friends and later, as something more, and Percy and Sam's dockside hangs and horror movie fests more than make up for the morose adults trudging through the show's first couple of episodes.

Every Year After really hits its stride midway through the season, when Soverall and Cornett assume the roles of their younger characters. (It's a bit of a leap to buy these obvious grown-ups as 15-year-olds, but if you can make it, it's worth it for the summer romance vibes alone.) Here, the actors get to show their range, and it becomes clear why they won the roles of the show's romantic leads.

Soverall especially shines in Every Year After's past timeline, particularly when Percy is at her most ambitious. Percy's summer goal of being able to swim across the lake is a high point in both the series and the book, and the confidence this gives her in all aspects of her life, including her relationship with Sam, is as engrossing as it is frustrating that Every Year After spends more time depicting Percy as a shell of her former self than the charismatic heroine Soverall is capable of portraying.

As Sue's Boy Scout-esque youngest son, Cornett as Sam is considerably less compelling, making his dynamic with Soverall all the more important. Unfortunately, though they have their moments of sweet and heat, Soverall and Cornett don't quite have the chemistry to anchor the show, and as revelations and betrayals come to light, a somewhat heel turn from Sam makes him and Percy even less shippable as a couple. They don't sink the show completely, though, and Every Year After stays afloat thanks to its much more interesting supporting characters.

Every Year After’s Scene-Stealing Supporting Cast Is Why Romance Fans Should Watch

It struck me as a bit odd that Every Summer After became the more blandly titled Every Year After as a TV show, though it eventually made sense: the novel is a story centered on Sam and Percy's romance, while the Prime Video series is more of an ensemble, with other characters getting their own romantic subplots. This is a very, very good thing.

Even in the book, Charlie was a scene-stealer, with his two-dimensional playboy persona being a thin veneer for the hurting black sheep of the Florek family, who had to become the man of the house at far too young an age. This kind of trauma makes Charlie more of an intriguing leading man than Sam — enough that Fortune wrote him his own sequel novel, One Golden Summer — and thankfully, Bradway lights up the screen just as brightly as his character does the page. If anything, Cornett has more chemistry with him than he does Soverall, giving the pair's brotherly scenes a necessary emotional heft.

As Percy's girlfriends, Chantal (Aurora Perrineau) and Delilah (Abigail Cowen) at first present as little more than their respective no-nonsense workaholic and mean-girl-who-peaked-in-high-school archetypes, though the actresses' performances promise something more from their characters, a promise the show quickly delivers on. A mid-season boozy girls' day is so much fun that viewers will wish they could leap through the screen and hang out with the characters, and the alcohol-induced candor makes Delilah and Chantal even more vulnerable and three-dimensional.

However, the absolute MVP of Every Year After season 1 is Joseph Chiu as Jordie, Barry's Bay's resident motel owner and Sam's best friend. Not appearing in the books, Jordie is an original character created for the series, and it's a brilliant move on Every Year After's part. Jordie infuses much-needed warm, golden retriever energy into the serious show, all without ever descending into himbo territory. In fact, he has emotional intelligence in spades, and his chemistry, particularly with certain female characters, gives Every Year After most of its heat.

Though Chiu has the shortest acting career of any Every Year After Cast member, his charisma is such that it's only a matter of time before he becomes an A-list leading man. In fact, should the show run for more seasons, Chiu's Jordie may very well become its romantic hero.

Unlike Off Campus, Prime Video didn't renew Every Year After for a second season ahead of its series premiere, but if showrunner Amy B. Harris has her way, there will be more to come. Harris told Entertainment Weekly that she has a five-season plan for the show with One Golden Summer serving as the "blueprint" for a potential second season. With a supporting cast this strong, it's certainly worth Prime Video's while to revisit Barry's Bay — even if the season 1 main couple is Every Year After's weak link.

All eight episodes ofEvery Year After season 1 release Wednesday, June 10, 2026, on Prime Video.