Carley Fortune has become one of the reigning queens of summer romance, and Our Perfect Storm is a solid entry in her catalog … though not her best.
Frankie and George are childhood best friends who end up taking a trip to Tofino together — what was meant to be Frankie’s honeymoon with another man, before her fiancé called it off the night before the wedding. It’s a friends-to-lovers setup, a trope Fortune handles better than almost anyone (Every Summer After remains one of my favorite uses of it), and the Little Women parallels are impossible to miss. Frankie and George see themselves as Jo and Laurie, and the book makes sure you don’t forget it — which is charming at first and a little heavy-handed by the end. It did make me want to rewatch both recent film adaptations, so there’s that.
My issue was with the miscommunication trope, which does a lot of heavy lifting here. It isn’t spoiling anything to say these two have obviously loved each other their whole lives and simply won’t talk about it, which made the “will they or won’t they” fall a little flat for me.
But George is an incredibly dreamy male lead, the sense of place in Tofino is gorgeous, and Fortune’s writing is as readable as ever. Worth it for those two things alone.
