Carley’s books—Every Summer After, published in 2022, and Meet Me at the Lake, published in 2023—are suffused with such nostalgia. She’s adamant that her novels aren’t directly autobiographical, but she owns that some of the emotions are pulled from her teenage journals—records of first loves, best kisses, breakups. “There’s a letter in there that I wrote to a crush but didn’t send,” she says. “Some of the pages are stained with tears. It’s all very intense.” And what better material for a romance novel than intensity.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t nostalgia that motivated Carley to write. She started her first book in the summer of 2020, largely because she was on the verge of work-related burnout. She and her husband, Marco, a teacher, had rented their little cottage for the season as a Covid refuge for themselves and their young son, Max. “It was really quiet here,” she says. “Many people on our lake, including the owner of our cottage, are Americans, and none of them could cross the border.”
Despite the solitude and the setting, Carley was anxious. At the time, she was the executive editor of online magazine Refinery29 Canada, the off-shoot of a popular American website. At the cabin, she had to tether her laptop to her phone to get online. Sometimes, to get a signal, she’d have to walk to the end of her dock and wave her phone around. “That’s life at the cottage,” says Carley.
She had been in the role for two years and was overworked and underpaid, even though the site’s readership was growing. “I led a smart team of women, and we were on fire,” she says. “Yet I was pretty frustrated and unhappy.” In July 2020, amidst the tumult of the pandemic economy, rumors started swirling that Refinery29’s parent company, Vice Media, was going to shutter the Canadian site to focus on its larger U.S. properties. “I remember getting off a stressful work call and thinking, I have given everything to my employers and kept nothing for myself,” she says, sitting in a Muskoka chair on the same dock where she used to flail her phone, which has now become her favourite place to write. “I wanted something just for me. So I said, ‘I’m going to do something I have always wanted to do: write a book. And I am going to do it by the end of the year.’”
Unlike some writers, who contemplate book ideas for years before putting pen to page, Carley hadn’t yet formulated a plot or dreamed up a cast of characters. Instead, she started with the setting. As a child, she had been a voracious reader, spending hours in the Madawaska Valley public library, a small, brick building in town, no bigger than a Tim Hortons. Flowers in the Attic, the dark, Gothic tale by V.C. Andrews, was one of her favourites. “It captured setting so well. I can still picture where it took place,” says Carley. When she sat down to write her own book, she knew she wanted it to have a strong sense of place. “I knew it would take place in Barry’s Bay at a lake,” she says, while simultaneously supervising Max swimming in the lake, ensuring he has his water wings on.
“I loved creative writing when I was a kid,” says Carley. “But I didn’t think you could make a living as an author. Discovering how much I loved writing fiction as an adult was such a revelation for me.” Photo by Erin Leydon
Carley calculated that the typical romance novel is around 80,000 words. With six months left in the year, she reasoned that all she had to do was write 388 words per day to accomplish her objective. “My goal wasn’t even to publish something,” she says. “I wanted to show myself that I could do it.”
Crucial to the writing process was Carley finding her passion for reading again, a pastime she rarely made time for after spending her days editing other people’s work. In 2018, she read To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han when Refinery29 was covering the release of the movie. “I used to love those kinds of novels. I started reading more from then on,” says Carley. She soon stopped watching TV to free up more time for reading. Even in the midst of lockdown in 2020 when binge-watching was the norm, it was easy for Carley to abstain in favour of picking up a book. “The cottage didn’t have a TV.” That year, she churned through upwards of 90 books. “I started reading a lot of romance,” she says. “The thing that surprised me was that they’re filled with complicated people in complicated situations. They also helped me escape. I loved how you knew that everything was going to turn out okay in the end.”
Through the rest of the summer and the fall, both at the cottage and back home in Toronto, Carley stuck to her daily word count. By then, she was also pregnant with her second son, Finn. “I would wake up at 5 or 6 a.m., before Max was up, and work,” she says “I would write in the evenings, or on weekends when Marco would take Max to the park.” And soon, she began to feel more confident. “I thought, This seems like a book. Maybe this could be published,” says Carley.
I wanted something just for me. So I said, I’m going to do something I have always wanted to do: write a book. And I am going to do it by the end of the year.
After four months, she had a manuscript, which she finished ahead of schedule. Within a couple of weeks, Marco and a few close friends had read her draft, and they were enthusiastic. The last line of her best friend Meredith’s email read: “YOU’RE GOING TO BE AN AUTHOR!” A fellow writer, Courtney Shea, told her she had something good.“I was nervous to get their feedback, but I was pleased that nobody suggested any huge changes.”
Moving ahead with publishing the book meant finding an agent. “I didn’t know a lick about book publishing, but I knew getting an agent was the hardest step,” she says. “I had heard it’s hard to even get an agent to open your email.” Louise Penny, one of Canada’s bestselling mystery novelists, was famously rejected by more than 40 agents before finally landing representation.
Unlike Louise Penny, Carley quickly had interest from multiple agents, including one who reached out through Instagram after Carley posted that she had drafted a book. With things moving fast, she contacted fellow Canadian authors Ashley Audrain and Karma Brown on how to navigate the process. Armed with their advice, Carley sent out more manuscripts with a note that she already had an offer of representation on the table. She ended up with three more offers within a week.
One agent she pitched was Los Angeles-based Taylor Haggerty, who specializes in romance novels and who represents Emily Henry, one of the genre’s current bestselling authors. “This was in December when the publishing industry normally closes down,” says Carley. “It was all very surreal. I had my call with Taylor on December 21, and I signed with her just after New Year’s.”
Soon after, Haggerty sought a publisher for the book, which resulted in an auction and a bidding war between five publishing houses. In March of 2021, Carley signed a two-book deal with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House. By October, and before her first book was published, she quit Refinery29 Canada just ahead of it closing in December. It was a gamble that paid off—Every Summer After has sold more than 900,000 copies, mainly in the U.S., surprisingly, but also in Canada and abroad, and it spent 13 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. (According to Publisher’s Weekly, the average book in the U.S. sells fewer than 500 copies.) “I am so grateful. I know it’s rare to have that kind of success,” she says. “I had help from my friends and my agent and my editors, and I had some good luck. But I also wrote something that fit well into an existing, popular genre that was a little bit different.”
One industry professional suggested Carley change the setting of “Every Summer After” to a less overtly Canadian locale in order for the book to have wider appeal. “I’d head that Americans don’t want to read stories set in Canada,” she says. “In hindsight, I’m so glad I didn’t do that. I can see now that Barry’s Bay really became a character in the book.” Photo by Erin Leydon
In Every Summer After, Persephone “Percy” Fraser, a magazine editor (who happens to be overworked and underpaid), and Sam Florek, an aspiring doctor, spend six years chasing one another during youthful cottage weekends before deciding once and for all to stay together. It’s fairly standard fare for a will-they-won’t-they tale. “Most beach reads are set on the East or West coast of the U.S.,” says Carley. “I think my readers have really enjoyed discovering Canadian cottage country.”
Carley didn’t always love cottage country herself. Shortly before she was born in Toronto, her father, Warwick, a chef, and her mother, Nancy, built a cottage in Barry’s Bay. After a stint living in Australia, the family moved back to Canada. Warwick didn’t want to work in the Toronto restaurant scene, and Nancy had grown up cottaging in Minden, Ont., so making a home outside of the city felt like the right move. Though Carley now relishes the tranquility of the lake, as a child, she found it challenging, she says, while sipping on an Aperol Spritz. Marco is preparing a dinner of grilled sourdough and burrata, while her youngest, Finn, plays quietly at her feet. “I was living in the bush at the end of a dirt road,” she says. “I didn’t make friends easily. At school, they made fun of my Australian accent. I had to practice to lose it.”
“Sometimes, it’s easier for people to relate to a fictional character. Ironically, their experiences can seem more real.”
Summers, though, were a reprieve. Carley’s dirt road came alive with cottagers. “I had cousins who would stay nearby,” she says. “Girl cousins, who’d play Barbies with me when we weren’t in the lake.” Summer, then, had to be the backdrop of her books. “I don’t think I would ever write a whole book about winter,” she says. “Some people like winter. But I don’t ski or snowboard. I’m one of the many people who spend winter dreaming about summer.”
Carley portrays Barry’s Bay so well that the area has seen a bump in tourists, some from as far as Texas and Florida (and some who unknowingly show up during blackfly season). In town, it’s not unusual to see people carrying around copies of Every Summer After. Even though Barry’s Bay resonated with her readers, her second book, Meet Me at the Lake, is set in Muskoka and in Toronto. “In my first book, Percy’s dad pokes fun at Muskoka,” she says. “I wanted to make up for that.” Her third book, This Summer Will Be Different, which comes out in May, is set on P.E.I. “I grew up loving Anne of Green Gables,” she says.
Despite the outward success, writing her follow-up books didn’t go as smoothly as the first. After giving birth to Finn in April 2021, Carley experienced postpartum anxiety. She had previously dealt with postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition where symptoms can include unwanted, often violent thoughts, after giving birth to Max in 2016. “It took me months to seek support after he was born,” says Carley. While writing Meet Me at the Lake, Carley wove the experience into the story. “As a journalist, I always tried to publish stories about mental health,” she says. “No one read them. I’m happy I get to explore that now, in a different way that people seem to respond to more,” she says. “Sometimes, it’s easier for people to relate to a fictional character. Ironically, their experiences can seem more real.”
Amidst it all, Carley felt the higher expectations and scrutiny for her second book. “When my publisher sent the first round of edits for Meet Me at the Lake, there were so many suggestions and changes, I felt like I needed to vomit for two days,” she says. “When I got my second round of edits for This Summer Will Be Different, I cried for a whole day. The process can be very emotional, putting so much thought into something only to be disappointed that you didn’t get it to the place it needed to be.”
Pushing through tough times is something she learned from her parents. When Carley was in her late teens, Nancy and Warwick opened an inn in Barry’s Bay, which they ran until they sold it in late 2020. “They put in an intense number of hours,” says Carley, who waited tables, cleaned guests’ rooms, and greeted visitors—basically anything that needed to be done. “To this day, I think one of my biggest strengths is that I’m a hard worker.”
And drawing on her own experiences has proven hugely successful. In Meet Me at the Lake, Fern Brookbanks, the daughter of a resort owner, falls for Will Baxter, a business consultant. It was an instant number one on The New York Times bestseller list, and it has sold almost 500,000 copies. Last summer, the screen rights were snapped up by Netflix and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s production company, Archewell, for a reported $5 million. Carley met Meghan over Zoom and spoke with Harry on the phone. “They were incredibly nice,” she says. “The story resonated with both of them deeply.”
Carley can’t say yet whether Meet Me at the Lake will be turned into a movie or a series. “I never planned, never imagined any of this,” she says looking out at the still lake from the dock, across to the distant shore. “I just wanted to show myself I could write a book.”
Matthew Hague is a freelance writer living in Toronto. He and his husband are currently rebuilding their cabin in Quebec’s Laurentians.