Book Review: ‘Our Perfect Storm’ by Carley Fortune
If you are a sucker for summer romance built on unspoken longing, friendships that quietly ache to become something more, and the slow reckoning of second chances, Our Perfect Storm deserves a spot at the top of your list. This is a novel for readers who like their love stories tender rather than flashy, rooted in memory and restraint, and shaped by the quiet question of what might have been if timing had been kinder.
Since Every Summer After was released in 2022, Carley Fortune has carved out a very specific space within contemporary romance. Her stories do not rush. They linger. They sit with nostalgia and regret and the particular ache of returning to a place that remembers who you used to be. Fortune writes settings the way other writers handle characters. You don’t just visit them. You feel as though you once lived there. Our Perfect Storm continues that tradition with one of her most emotionally layered stories yet.
[Note: While I am reviewing this novel independently and honestly, it should be noted that it has been provided to me by Berkley for the purpose of this review. Warning: My review of Our Perfect Storm contains some spoilers!]
One relationship falls apart, and another blossoms in Our Perfect Storm
At the center of the novel are Frankie and George, best friends who have known each other since childhood. Their bond begins simply and sweetly, with notes exchanged through a birdhouse mailbox built by George, but like so many long friendships, it grows complicated as adulthood pulls them in different directions. Frankie has poured herself into a culinary career that leaves her burned out and disconnected from her own joy. George, a reporter, has spent years drifting from place to place, never staying long enough to put down roots.
When Frankie’s wedding abruptly falls apart, her fiancé leaving behind only a note on the morning of the ceremony, it is George who stands beside her. What follows is not a dramatic declaration or a rushed romance, but something far more in line with Fortune’s strengths. It is a slow, emotionally honest unraveling.
Frankie and George decide to take the honeymoon anyway, traveling together to Tofino. The choice feels impulsive, maybe even reckless, but it becomes a necessary pause. It is a space where grief, friendship, and long-suppressed truths finally have room to surface.
Carley Fortune’s work is so much more than your typical romance novel
What elevates Our Perfect Storm beyond a familiar friends-to-lovers arc is how deeply the novel is shaped by Frankie’s relationship with her mother and the presence of whales as both literal and symbolic anchors. Frankie’s mother left the family for over a year when Frankie was eight, chasing her calling as a marine biologist dedicated to protecting endangered right whales. That abandonment fractures their relationship, and even after her mother returns, the damage lingers. Frankie refuses to hear about the whales ever again, as though silencing them might also erase the pain of being left behind.
The whales are not incidental. They are woven into the emotional fabric of the story. These massive, migratory, endangered, and constantly at-risk creatures mirror the central relationships in the novel. Frankie grows up feeling like something precious was chosen over her. Her mother’s devotion to the whales becomes a wound that never fully heals, and Frankie’s refusal to speak of them is a form of self protection. Yet Fortune resists simple judgments. The whales are not villains, nor is the mother’s passion framed as selfishness alone. Instead, the novel sits with the uncomfortable truth that love and duty do not always align neatly. Protecting something fragile in the world can come at a devastating personal cost. Over time, the whales become a quietly heartbreaking reminder of the sacrifices women are sometimes asked to make, or choose to make, and of the children who grow up carrying the weight of those choices.
Tofino itself feels inseparable from this theme. Fortune’s journalistic background shows in the way she writes about the coastline, the cold water, and the sense of ecological precarity that hangs over the region. The ocean is not romanticized into something gentle. It is powerful, unpredictable, and alive. In this setting, the emotional storms Frankie has spent years avoiding finally break open.
As Frankie and George move through grief, memory, and desire, the novel asks whether it is possible to forgive not just other people, but the past itself. Can childhood wounds be reexamined without reopening them? Can love grow in the space left by disappointment? And what does it mean to choose one life over another, or to wonder if you already did, long ago, without realizing it.
Our Perfect Storm is reflective, quietly devastating, and emotionally patient. It is less about grand romantic gestures and more about the slow courage it takes to stay, to speak, and to listen, to the people we love and to the parts of ourselves we have tried to silence. For readers who appreciate romance that lingers long after the final page, Carley Fortune continues to prove she is one of the defining voices of the genre.
Rating: 10/10
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune is available May 5, so preorder now! Are you planning on checking this book out when it comes out? Have you read any of Carley Fortune’s other novels? Let us know @bsb.insider on social media!
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