Prime Video Changed Almost Everything About Every Summer After. Carley Fortune Helped Them Do It.
The title changed. The city changed. The lead character's job changed. The way Sam finds out the truth changed. And the author of Every Summer After executive produced every episode of Every Year After. Here is what is different and why Fortune says it still works.
Every Summer After, Carley Fortune's debut novel from 2022, is a summer romance about Percy and Sam, childhood friends who fall in love at a lake house and then spend a decade not talking about it. It became a word-of-mouth hit on BookTok before Prime Video optioned it, which is the standard origin story for this kind of adaptation now.
Every Year After dropped on Prime Video on June 10, 2026. All eight episodes at once. And book readers who went in expecting a faithful recreation of the novel came out with a list of things to discuss, because the show made a lot of changes.
Here is the part that surprises people: Fortune signed on as executive producer. She was in the room for all of it. She is not defending the changes from the outside. She made them.
AT A GLANCE • Show title: Every Year After (Prime Video) • Book title: Every Summer After by Carley Fortune (2022) • Stars: Sadie Soverall as Percy, Matt Cornett as Sam • Episodes: 8 episodes, all released June 10, 2026 • Author role: Carley Fortune serves as executive producer • Title change reason: Expanded to cover more than just the summer, allowing for a broader arc • Percy's job: Changed from magazine editor in Toronto to obituary writer in Seattle • Notable addition: Chantal, who travels to Barry's Bay and has a romance with Jordie (invented entirely for the show) • Reviews: Split on release, strong on Rotten Tomatoes, divisive among book fans |
Why the Title Changed First
When Prime Video started development, one of the first decisions was the title. Every Summer After limits the story to a season. Every Year After opens it up. The show covers more than one summer, which means the title was genuinely restrictive rather than just a branding choice.
Fortune explained publicly that she understood why the change was necessary once she started working on the adaptation. A title that pins your story to one season is useful for a novel, where the summer is the emotional frame. In a series that can grow beyond a single season, you want something broader.
What Actually Changed
The biggest structural change is Percy's job. In the book, she is a magazine editor in Toronto. In the show, she writes obituaries for a paper in Seattle. That is not a small adjustment. It changes her entire relationship to writing, to death, to memory, and to the kind of attention she pays to other people's lives.
Fortune has said she finds the obituary writer version of Percy more interesting for a television character. An editor shapes other people's words. An obituary writer is forced to find meaning in endings. Both are writers, but they are writers with different relationships to what writing is for.
The other significant change involves Sam and what he knows about Percy's past with Charlie. In the book, Percy assumes Sam does not know she slept with his brother. Sam later admits he always knew, because Charlie told him. In the show, the reveal lands differently: Sam genuinely does not know at first, and the discovery comes later and from a different direction. Fortune says that adjustment creates more usable tension in a visual medium. In a book, dramatic irony can live in the reader's head. On screen, you need somewhere for it to go.
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The New Characters
Chantal barely appears in the novel. She is Percy's friend who exists in phone calls, a presence who keeps Percy grounded between the lake chapters. In the show, Chantal travels to Barry's Bay, meets Jordie, and has her own full romantic storyline. That arc was invented entirely for the series.
Delilah, who is Percy's childhood friend in the book and stays in the past-timeline, is given a present-day story in the show. She is in a difficult marriage and having an affair. That addition gives the show a secondary love story that runs parallel to Percy and Sam's and keeps the ensemble moving when the central couple is not in crisis.
Both additions are the kind of choices that make book readers nervous before they watch. The question is always whether the new material serves the show or dilutes it. The critical response suggests the Chantal-Jordie storyline works; the Delilah addition is getting more divided reactions.
Split Reviews and What That Means
Every Year After is sitting at strong numbers on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, with audience scores more divided. That split is almost always a book-to-screen sign: critics are evaluating the show on its own terms, while some of the audience is evaluating it against what they read.
Fortune's position as executive producer is relevant here. She is not an author who sold her book and stepped away. She made creative decisions throughout production. That does not automatically make every change the right call, but it does mean the changes came from someone who understood what the book was trying to do.
The show is out now. You can watch it and come to your own conclusion about whether Percy as an obituary writer in Seattle is a better version of the story than Percy as a magazine editor in Toronto. The fact that there are two versions means the question is worth asking.
WHAT WRITERS CAN TAKE FROM THIS • When an author takes an executive producer credit on their own adaptation, they are trading some control for the ability to shape decisions. That tradeoff is deliberate, not passive. • A character's job is part of their character. Changing it changes how they think, what they notice, and what they value. That is not a small detail. • Dramatic irony works differently in prose and on screen. What lives in the reader's head in a novel needs a physical location in a scene to function on television. • New characters added for adaptations usually serve one of two functions: generating new plot threads, or giving existing characters someone to react to when the plot slows down. • Split audience and critic scores on a book adaptation almost always means the split is between people evaluating the show and people comparing it to the book. |
Every Year After changed when it moved from page to screen because the writers needed to track a much larger number of variables: characters, timelines, added storylines, and new emotional beats across eight episodes. That kind of complexity is much easier to manage when your research and story notes are organized in one place. WriteO's Novel Notes keeps your character notes, plot research, and story references organized and searchable so nothing gets lost as your project grows.
Sources: Deadline (10 Big Differences), Refinery29, E! Online, TechTimes, Parade, AOL Entertainment