Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

A special thank you to the publisher, Penguin Canada, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn't.

At thirty-two, Fern's life doesn't look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern's back home, running her mother's Muskoka lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend's the manager, and Fern doesn't know where to begin.

She needs a plan—a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern's not sure she wants to know what it is.

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?

After a whirlwind daylong adventure, Ferm and Will make a promise that one of them keeps and the other breaks. Meet Me at the Lake is a beautiful story about missed connections and second chances set against the picturesque backdrop of Muskoka. 

Fortune's writing is effortless and immersive—she is a master of dialogue and witty banter. The narrative flows from past to present, urban to rural. Through well-developed and perfectly executed backstories, Fortune shows how Fern and Will become the present day versions of themselves. She also uses diary entries to fully flesh out the character of Maggie as well as Fern's memories in order to further explore the mother-daughter relationship which is a central theme of the book.  

Although there are similarities to Every Summer After—lake setting, the theme of grief, dual timeline—this is an entirely fresh story. Brimming with nostalgia for summers at the lake, Meet Me at the Lake is like coming home.

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CARLEY FORTUNE is an award-winning journalist who also worked as an editor at some of Canada’s top publications, including The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Toronto Life, and was most recently the Executive Editor of Refinery29 Canada. Carley holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). 

Carley spent her young life in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and in Barry’s Bay, a tiny lakeside town in rural Ontario and the setting for Every Summer After. 

Fortune lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons. 

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Q & A with Carley Fortune*

GWR: Are you a pantser/gardner or a plotter/architect? What does your writing process look like? How many hours a day do you write?

CF: I’m a pantser. Before I begin, I have a broad concept for the story, and if there’s a twist or a reveal, I might know that too—though not always. I have the vaguest sense of who my characters are, but almost everything reveals itself as I write. I love that about my process. The way scenes, dialogue, and character quirks pop into my brain often feels like magic. 

Writing is my day job, and I approach it like one. As soon as my husband and kids are out the door, I get to work, breaking for lunch and (hopefully) exercise, and then am back to my keyboard until everyone gets home and chaos ensues. I tend to write my first draft quickly and without editing. But by the time I hand it in to my editors, I’ve revised the manuscript multiple times. 

 

GWR: You have a publishing background—did this help or hinder your writing? What do you like most about the publishing process?

CF: I was a journalist for sixteen years, working as an editor at outlets like Refinery29, Chatelaine, The Globe and Mail, and Toronto Life. So much of what I’ve learned about writing and the editorial process comes from my media background and from my journalism degree: the importance of clarity, selecting telling details, the tremendous value of editors, meeting deadlines, reaching an audience, the power of a good cover, and what it means to produce something at the intersection of art, craft, and commerce. 

What I love about book publishing is the extra time and attention that goes into the work, as well as the longevity of a novel compared to an article. My debut novel, Every Summer After, came out in May of 2022, and it boggles my mind that there are still thousands of people buying a copy of the book every week. I’ve always been passionate about my work, I’ve always put my heart and soul into my job, and now I feel like it’s absolutely worth the effort. I know I’m doing what I was meant to do.

 

GWR: What was the inspiration behind Meet Me at the Lake?

CF: Insomnia! I wrote Every Summer After in 2020 while I was pregnant with my second child, and we sold it in a two-book deal when I was eight months pregnant. I suffered insomnia throughout the pregnancy and after I gave birth. At the same time, I had to pitch an idea for my second book to my editor. I was lying awake in the middle of the night after a feeding, trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do. So I asked myself where I wanted to be. I find that writing is like reading, in that you’re transported to the characters’ world. And I saw it immediately: a classic lakeside resort in Muskoka, and Fern, who’s reluctantly back home running the place following the death of her mom. There’s a storyline told through a series of diary entries Fern’s mom wrote in the summer of 1990, and that came to me that night as well. The love story took longer to sort out. I decided to challenge myself to do the exact opposite thing I did with Every Summer After, where the characters fall in love over years. In Meet Me at the Lake, I wanted to build an intense, life-altering bond in just 24 hours. 

GWR: Did you start writing Meet Me at the Lake before the release of Every Summer After? Did the success of Every Summer After impact your writing of Meet Me at the Lake?

CF: By the time Every Summer After was published, I had already submitted the second draft of Meet Me at the Lake. Both my editor and agent, who are tremendously talented and savvy, had suggested having the second book well underway by the time the first came out. And I’m so glad I followed their advice. I already had a massive case of self-doubt while working my second book. I was worried my ability to write Every Summer After had been a fluke. We had big hopes for Every Summer After, but the way it exploded was a huge surprise, at least to me. I’m sure my imposter syndrome would have been almost debilitating had I been drafting Meet Me at the Lake when Every Summer After became a bestseller. 

 

GWR: Did any minor characters become major characters over the course of the novel?

CF: Yes. In my first draft of Meet Me at the Lake, Jamie, who is Fern’s ex and the manager of the resort, was not her ex. With every draft, he took on a greater role, which was so fun, because Jamie was one of my favourite characters to write. Maggie, who is Fern’s mom, was always a major character, but since she’s recently passed away when we meet Fern in the present-day storyline, she is mostly developed through her diary entries and through Fern’s memories. The mother-daughter relationship is core to the book, and my editors helped me give it (and Maggie herself) texture, weight, and specificity with every draft. 

 

GWR: You shift perspectives with the use of diary entries and alternate between past and present—what made you decide to write the book this way? Was it easier or more challenging to explore the parallel storyline?

CF: I love playing with time, and I enjoy books that experiment with structure and technique. I love it when characters have a history, so when I’m brainstorming, I tend to spend much of my effort creating elaborate backstories for my love interests. It feels natural for me to go back and forth between present and past storylines, and in some ways easier than writing one linear story—it’s like two short books in one, and I can pack in a lot. I’m interested in how our relationships to ourselves and others shift over time, and alternating timelines is a great tool for exploring that. 

 

GWR: There is strong nostalgia associated with your books for summers in Muskoka/Barry's Bay as well as the city of Toronto—why is it important to feature these Canadian settings versus a generic US locale?    

CF: Every Summer After is set in Toronto and Barry’s Bay, which is a small town in eastern Ontario where I lived from grade four until the end of high school. Barry’s Bay far less populated than Muskoka and quite far from the city. Meet Me at the Lake is set at a fictional resort in Muskoka and the Toronto of ten years ago. Every Summer After began as a project that was just for me. I wanted to write about how I grew up: on a lake, in the bush, with cottagers who come and go with the seasons. But when I realized it might become a published book, I asked agents whether they thought the Canadian setting might be a problem. I got mixed feedback. Honestly: I wouldn’t have set the book in the US, but I would have made the precise location of Barry’s Bay unknowable if it meant being published. Fortunately, both my editor (who is based in New York) and my agent (who is based in LA) loved the setting, and I’m so grateful it appears the way I initially wrote it. In hindsight, I think that’s one of the reasons it resonated with readers outside of Canada—there’s an escapist element we crave in our summer reads. My favourite part of writing Meet Me at the Lake was Will and Fern’s twenty-four hours in Toronto—I think it’s dreamy and magical and a love letter to the city the same way that Every Summer After was a love letter to Barry’s Bay. 

 

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be? 

CF: French press coffee, black, the way Fern drinks it. 

 

GWR: What are you working on now?

CF: I’m working on my third book, which I am preposterously excited about. It’s the most fun I’ve had writing thus far, and I can’t wait to share more about it. (Hopefully later this summer!) 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.

Coronation Year by Jennifer Robson

A special thank you to the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel.

Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day, Queen Elizabeth in her gold coach will pass by the hotel’s front door, allowing Edie to charge a fortune for rooms and, barring disaster, save her beloved home from financial ruin. Edie’s luck might just be turning, all thanks to a young queen about her own age. 

Stella Donati, a young Italian photographer and Holocaust survivor, has come to live at the Blue Lion while she takes up a coveted position at Picture Weekly magazine. London in celebration mode feels like a different world to her. As she learns the ins and outs of her new profession, Stella discovers a purpose and direction that honour her past and bring hope for her future.

James Geddes, a war hero and gifted artist, has struggled to make his mark in a world that disdains his Indian ancestry. At the Blue Lion, though, he is made to feel welcome and worthy. Yet even as his friendship with Edie deepens, he begins to suspect that something is badly amiss at his new home.

When anonymous threats focused on Coronation Day, the Blue Lion, and even the queen herself disrupt their mood of happy optimism, Edie and her friends must race to uncover the truth, save their home, and expose those who seek to erase the joy and promise of Coronation Year.

For fans of The Crown, Jennifer Robson's latest royal-adjacent historical novel counts down to Queen Elizabeth's Coronation. Set at London's historic Blue Lion hotel, Coronation Year is told from the perspectives of  Edie, the hotel owner; Stella, a budding photographer; and Jamie, an artist. 

Through her meticulous research, Robson's deftly balances the intricacies of historical fiction with romance (between Edie and Jamie) and mystery (a bomb threat on the day of the procession). The story is framed around the Coronation which also impacts the lives of the characters by bringing them into each other's orbit. 

The strong character development is not only reserved for the main characters, but also for the supporting cast which includes the hotel's staff and its eccentric boarders. And readers will be delighted with cameos of some former characters, as well as the Queen herself! 

Robson is a historical fiction force. Her attention to detail, beautiful prose, and memorable characters are what makes Coronation Year a standout.  

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JENNIFER ROBSON is the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France, After the War Is Over, Moonlight Over Paris, Goodnight from London, The Gown, and Our Darkest Night. She studied French literature and Modern History as an undergraduate at King’s University College at Western University, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where she obtained her doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford, she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.

Robson lives in Toronto with her husband and children. 

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Q & A with Jennifer Robson*

GWR: Is there a particular author/work that inspired you to become a writer or the way you write? 


JR: Such a hard question to answer! I carry with me traces of every book I’ve read and loved, and I think this is true of most writers. In terms of singling out any one writer whose work inspired me to start writing, I know I’ve mentioned it many times in interviews but Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird has had an incalculable effect on me. Whenever I begin to worry that my well of inspiration has run dry, or that I don’t really know what I’m doing, I return to it and let her wise and oh-so-sensible advice sink in.


GWR: What was the genesis of the novel?


JR: With both The Gown and Coronation Year I began with a simple question: what was life like for ordinary people in 1947/1953? A straightforward character study of one or several characters’ struggles in those years would have been satisfying to write, but it would have been difficult to persuade readers new to my work to pick up what would have probably seemed like a pretty dry read! That’s when I settled on the idea of using the Royal Wedding and the Coronation as backdrops—they’d add a touch of royal glamour to the proceedings, and also make the narrative more interesting. There’s a reason that writers love anything that offers us a chance to compare/contrast the lives of characters in wildly different social strata.


GWR: What comes first for you—the overall idea or the characters?  


JR: First it’s the general idea—with Coronation Year, it was the notion that the Coronation procession passing by a certain place in London would have an outsize effect on the people living there. Then the characters came to me, beginning with Edie. As soon as I decided on her name I could picture everything else about her.


GWR: What character did you enjoy writing the most? 


JR: I loved all three of them—Edie, Jamie and Stella all felt like old friends by the time I wrote “The End.” Jamie was certainly the most challenging character to create, since his life was so radically different from my own. He’s a man, a person of colour, a veteran, and an artist. I can’t honestly say I truly know what it’s like to stand in his shoes, but I asked a lot of questions of people who do, and I incorporated their suggestions into the narrative, and I hope readers will find in him a character who is both believable and familiar.

GWR: 
I’m always amazed at the level of detail in your books—can you tell us about the research you did for Coronation Year? Do you have family ties to England?


JR: I do have family ties to the UK: my paternal grandparents were from Newcastle (pure Geordies) and my maternal grandmother was born near Stirling in Scotland. From them, and my parents in turn, I think I absorbed a sense of the British temperament and way of life that I might otherwise not have fully understood as a Canadian. 

In terms of research, I once again relied on my old standbys that were so useful when I was a graduate student: primary sources such as newspapers, magazines, and newsreels, memoirs and diaries, historic maps, and (boring but often useful) government documents. 


GWR: Why do you think there is such a fascination with the royal family and the history/traditions of the monarchy?


JR: Where do I even begin? I think the very longevity of the institution is one of the main reasons it interests so many of us: in our ever-changing, ever-renewing modern world there are simply very few things that stay the same. To a certain extent that feeling of permanence and solidity, over the course of almost a century, was embodied by the figure of Queen Elizabeth; but it’s also the case that the ancient ceremonies and objects that surround the British monarchy hold their own allure. Just think of the Coronation ceremony, elements of which date back nearly a thousand years, or the regalia itself, most of which is hundreds of years old. What else in our throwaway world can compare to that?

Separate from all of that, of course, is our interest in the royal family as celebrities; and while they may resist being thought of in such a way—no royal wishes to be remembered for what they wear, or scandals in which they’re embroiled—I think there’s no way to avoid it. The question, then, is how they ought to balance their celebrity status, and the enormous power that comes with it, against the gravitas that the institution itself demands. 


GWR: There is an element of mystery in Coronation Year—have you ever considered writing a different genre? 


JR: Absolutely not! I love reading mysteries but I find it such a challenge to successfully incorporate elements of mystery or suspense in my books. If I were ever to write in another genre it would most likely be a work of narrative non-fiction that focuses on a historic event or person.

GWR: 
If your book was a beverage, what would it be? 


JR: That’s easy—a cup of strong English breakfast tea with milk and just a little bit of sugar.

GWR: 
You’re always reading something good! What books are on your nightstand?


JR: I recently finished Starring Adele Astaire by Eliza Knight and I loved it—pure catnip from start to finish. I’m just about to dig into After Anne by Logan Steiner, which looks at the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery. And I also have a pile of books I bought on my January trip to England that are research material for my work-in-progress. (At least that’s how I justified lugging them back across the pond.)

GWR: 
What are you working on now?


JR: It’s early days yet so I’m a little shy about sharing too many details. I can say that it’s set in England in the 20th century and has a heroine I find absolutely fascinating. I’ll have more to say very soon—I promise!


*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.