With summer officially on the way, many are dreaming of heading to the cottage. The new series Every Year After is now streaming and offers a chance to escape to a lake house through its latest love story.
The highly anticipated series was a trending topic on Google on Wednesday, and is based on the best-selling novel Every Summer After by Canadian author Carley Fortune. The book is set in Barry’s Bay, a quintessential lake town in Ontario. And while it was shot on location in Canada, the location in the series is the fictionalized town of Barry’s Bay, British Columbia.
The Amazon Original series released all eight of this season’s episodes on Wednesday, starring Sadie Soverall and Matt Cornett as Percy and Sam, the couple at the centre of the love story.
Percy spends every summer as a teen at her family’s cottage in Barry’s Bay, where she becomes friends with her next-door neighbours Sam and Charlie Florek, played by Michael Bradway.
Every summer, Percy and Sam’s friendship continues to blossom into a whirlwind romance. Ten years later, Percy returns to Barry’s Bay, where she’s forced to reunite with her ex-boyfriend and confront the one that got away.
The series jumps between flashbacks to their childhood romance and their post-breakup in the modern day, when they reunite following their separation.
Additional cast members include Aurora Perrineau, Abigail Cown, Joseph Chiu and Elisha Cuthbert.
Every Year After was filmed in multiple locations across Canada, including British Columbia.
Fortune previously told Decider that it was important to her that the show was authentically Canadian.
Get daily National news
Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you’ll never miss the day’s top stories.
“The thing I felt most strongly about was the setting and making sure the book was set in Canada,” she told the outlet.
While Fortune’s novel takes place in Barry’s Bay, Ont., where the author grew up, the series didn’t actually shoot in the town of around 1,084 people.
Showrunner Amy B. Harris said the beautiful part of the story is that it does take place in Canada, but she realized they “could not shoot in the actual Barry’s Bay.”
That’s when producers decided to move filming to Bowen Island off the coast of Vancouver.
Teen Vogue reports that eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the welcome sign to Barry’s Bay says “British Columbia” and not Ontario, which was by design.
“Because the locations we found were so stunning and really met what we hoped for in terms of the look of the dock and the water, and the mountains added this majestic element, we didn’t want to lie and say it was Ontario,” Harris told Teen Vogue.
Fortune, who was on set throughout filming in B.C. during the summer of 2025, noted that “British Columbia does not look like Ontario cottage country.”
She said she advocated for the fictional version of Barry’s Bay to be clearly identified as in British Columbia.
“Setting is so key to me in my books,” she told the outlet. “As a Canadian, we get very used to seeing our cities represent other places, so let’s let British Columbia be British Columbia for once.”
Bowen Island Tourism reports that filming locations within the island’s Snug Cove include Union Steamship Marina Resort, Doc Morgan’s Pub and Restaurant, Tippy’s Cookhouse and the Lagoon Causeway.
Other shows like Riverdale, Supernatural and Virgin River have also used Bowen Island as a filming location.
Vancouver and North Shore Studios are also listed as filming locations for Every Year After, according to IMDB.
After streaming Season 1, many fans will be wondering if there will be a second season.
Harris has already said she sees “five seasons” of the new series.
“Obviously, there’s another book that’s connected to Barry’s Bay that I think will be a very exciting blueprint for us for a potential season two,” Harris told Entertainment Weekly.
The showrunner was referencing Fortune’s novel One Golden Summer, which follows Charlie (Bradway) while he finds love on the lake in Barry’s Bay.
“We have these six main characters, and I think we’ll be adding characters as the seasons go on. I really see this as a series, and it’s why we built it the way we did so that we can come back and explore a lot more romance,” she added.
Every Year After is available to stream on Prime Video.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
