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Author
Carley Fortune is a #1 New York Times and #1 Globe And Mail bestselling author of Every Summer After, Meet Me At The Lake, This Summer Will Be Different, and One Golden Summer.
Carley is also an award winning journalist and has worked as an editor for 15 years before writing her first book Every Summer After. Writing a book had been a long ambition for Carley and she finally decided to start writing this book in July 2020. This book takes place in Barry’s Bay which is where Carley moved to at eight years old and grew up there. Carley now lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.
Plot
Fern Brookbanks has spent too much of her adult like thinking about Will Baxter. She spent only 24 hours with him in Toronto in her early twenties but their connection was undeniable, just ill timed. They shared every secret, every dream and made a pact to meet up at Fern’s family lakeside resort in Muskoka exactly one year later. Fern showed up, Will didn’t.
At thirty-two Ferns life isn’t at all how she imagined it would be. She vowed she’d never be running her mother’s lakeside resort but she is, instead of living in the city like she planned. The place needs a lot of help, Fern’s ex-boyfriend is the manager and she has no idea where to start.
Fern needs a plan, and to her surprise, in walks Will nine years later than he promised. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern’s going through and he offers to help her. But how could she possibly trust this expensive suit wearing Will who seems nothing like the art loving Will from her twenties.
Quotes
“My headphones were both my therapist and my invisibility cloak.”
“It’s not everyday you decide to change your entire life.”
“You’re not an escape. You’re everything.”
“We’re not the same people we were at twenty-two. It’s okay to want different things.”
“It’s not selfish to want something for yourself. It’s human.”
My Review
Carley Fortune is an amazing writer so of course I loved this book. She’s single-handedly converted me to liking a dual timeline book. I fell in love with Fern and Will’s characters and just couldn’t get enough of them. I wanted to know what happened on that day ten years ago and how it all went wrong. It was so hard to put the book down. I will say though that I was hoping for more of a fight from Will’s end towards the end of the book. He put Fern through a lot over the years and I really wanted him to make the first move to make up for the unknown she had to go through. I would absolutely recommend this book to someone looking for a summer beach read and rate it 4/5 stars.
And that’s the end of my Meet Me At The Lake by Carley Fortune book review. If you read this book let me know in the comments if you love it as much as I did. If you’re looking for other books to read check out these reviews: Ready Or Not, Any Trope But You, and Beach Vibes.