It has already been a massive 12 months for the book girlies.

Hollywood, it seems, has finally realised the best storylines are the ones all the former Wattpad fanatics are staying up until 2am to read and endlessly making fan edits about online. Huzzah!

Watch: Is it okay for book adaptions to go off the rails? Post continues below.

0 0

Is It Ok for Book Adaptations to go off the Rails? | The Quicky

With Heated Rivalry, Off Campus and now, Every Year After, the book-to-screen adaptions do not look like they are slowing down anytime soon and keep them coming, I say.

It's been a few months since I first read Carley Fortune's Every Summer After, so when Prime Video's Every Year After series was released, my memory of the plot was a little hazy.

I remembered there was Percy, a bookish and cautious redhead with a love for horror movies. And Sam, a future doctor and Percy's life-long crush, as well as Charlie, the handsome, cheeky and hard-to-pin down older brother.

Throw in a picturesque Canadian Rockies summer backdrop, and you have the recipe for a perfect love story, right?

Well, what I absolutely did not remember was the hatred I started feeling for both of the main characters about three episodes in.

For those that haven't tuned in, the story follows the three main characters in two timelines.

The first, they're in their late twenties and the boys' mum, Sue, has died. Percy hasn't seen any of them, or set foot near the lake for 10 years for a reason that is yet to be revealed, but sounds like it will completely and utterly RUIN EVERYTHING. She returns for the memorial and the very sad and very awkward tension that hangs in the air between all the characters is almost unbearable to witness.

In the second timeline, we live through every summer from when Percy, played by Sadie Soverall, and Sam, played by Matt Cornett, first met at age 13, to their last summer together five years later, when things fell apart, and she left the lake with zero explanation for a decade.

And here is where you bookmark this tab if you haven't finished the series, because SPOILERS ARE AHEAD.

Image: Prime Video.

It's clear from the start that these two are going to fall in love despite only seeing each other for a few months a year, because famously, anything is possible in summer.

But wow, does it take a long time to get there.

The completely messy and unnecessary relationship timeline is as follows: Fall in love, then break up because you're juniors in high school now and that is very serious (okay…), date other people, break up with said people, get back together, break up again and this time over email, sleep with ex-boyfriends brother, disappear for 10 years, reappear without a warning, cause the break-up of yet another relationship, get back together, reveal that you slept with his brother a decade ago, break up a family and FINALLY, a hint of a possibility of getting back together.

And, my god, I'm out of breath.

What I remembered from the book was endearing, innocent teenagers fumbling with each other's hearts, which was translated to eight frustrating episodes of two people who clearly love each other and are doing anything but sitting down over a pierogi and talk about it like adults, which they often claim to be.

As Sam and Percy stumble towards finally grappling with their true feelings, every other character — from their friends to their family — are collateral damage, a blazing trail of people they have hurt in their wake.

I know we're supposed to be rooting for Percy, after years of reckoning with her mistake, but I couldn't help but be distracted at the truly awful friend she was being, not only to Sam (if you were actually best friends, surely you wouldn't show up to his mother's funeral without a little heads-up text), but also to Charlie, who she had also grown up alongside. Charlie, who spent years in the shadows of their relationship, despite being a self-confessed ladies-man, was just simply lonely and traumatised by the death of his dad.

Or to Delilah, who turned out to be one of the most consistent friendships of her life, but was, too, discarded when either times got tough or if Sam's attention was available instead.

I see you guys. Image: Prime Video.

And let us not forget the unsung hero of the entire show, Chantal, Percy's lawyer, adult friend who dropped absolutely everything the day after her own engagement party to make sure Percy got safely to Barry's Bay. Who stayed with her in a tiny motel room without complaints and spent most days on her own as Percy went around hurting more people, perhaps calling her up once or twice for legal advice. Justice for Chantal!

To be honest, I was surprised how patient everyone was being with her, considering she had been pining for her teenage sweetheart for an entire decade. We all have friends we want to shake and scream, "IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON NOW," and strangely, Percy never seemed to have this.

For more on entertainment, listen to this episode of Mamamia's The Spill. Post continues below.

The show that was supposed to be my heartwarming weekend watch, ended up changing my mind on the right-person-wrong-time trope completely. Because even though, yes, I enjoyed the show, there were times when I wanted to throw something at the screen.

Because maybe the whole one-person-for-everyone schtick is only magical to the people in it, maybe we need to take a step back and question if the miscommunication, frustration, years lost and people hurt are even worth it in the end.

Is this what a fully-formed frontal lobe feels like?

Feature image: Prime Video.