The Novels of the Summer

The chaotic romance your younger self wished you had and your older self is glad you didn’t.

That’s what Carley Fortune’s books do for me. 

I’m on a fiction kick right now because the self helps aren’t helping anything.

Sometimes I get so tired of people telling me what to do, how to feel or where to do better.

I want to get lost in a story of romance and drama and passion, without it being my own rollercoaster of emotions.

I’ve finished “Meet Me at The Dock” and I’m 19 pages into “Every Summer After”. I’m hooked as I stare out my high-rise Toronto apartment.

Her city descriptions of the 6ix have me picturing the main characters every move. Her cottage country childhood memories fill my body with nostalgia and remind of the daydreams my 13 year old self would have as I’d lay on the dock. 

Colleen Hoover novels give us the steam, the romance, the drama but I never relate to the characters true trials and tribulations.

Fortune’s characters feel like an extension of me. A life I could’ve lived but thankfully didn’t. 

I can smell the cottage musk, I can hear the city’s construction. They are all home to me.

My roommate and I were just talking about how we underestimate the need for a healthy home life.

Both returning from family trips away, we each take the biggest deep breath as we walk back into our space. 

Nothing quite compares to home. The ability to have one of your own. The familiarity of the city you were raised as you read a novel about someone else’s days. 

“Why would you spend time reading?” My younger cousins asks me.

“Because, it helps me escape. Or, maybe, it reminds me of who I am.”

And we all need a little bit of that sometimes.