Sunlit Summers and Second Chances: The Chapter That Started It All
Every Summer After is all about nostalgic summers on the lake, and I'm already feeling nostalgic for our first Page to Palette chapter, "Sunlit Summers and Second Chances."
It all started with a Facebook post, as it often does when I'm reading a contemporary romance novel.
Usually, I post a "Who's read this?" with an uploaded photo of the book in my hand, and a handful of people respond. While it's exciting to know that others have entered a world I'm immersed in at the time, I'm left to travel alone even though I long for a community to chat with about the characters and setting in which I'm invested wholeheartedly.
This time, Melina replied.
"I LOVED it."
That one response changed everything.
When I asked if she'd help me bring an idea to life—an immersive book club where readers could step into the stories they loved instead of simply talking about them—she didn't hesitate. Despite an impossibly busy schedule, we met that Saturday, and somewhere between catching up on life and reminiscing about our days together at East Rock, where she was a student and I was her librarian, Page to Palette stopped being a daydream and became a plan.
We talked about Every Summer After, which was about to find a whole new audience with its upcoming Prime Video adaptation, and immediately circled May 17 on the calendar—the evening before Victoria Day, Canada's unofficial beginning of summer.
From there, the details almost wrote themselves.
If readers were going to step into Barry's Bay, we couldn't simply meet in a coffee shop.
We needed a lake.
We searched for a place that captured the feeling of Kamaniskeg Lake, and Lake Shenandoah turned out to be exactly what we were looking for. I originally imagined recreating The Tavern inside a restaurant, but Melina kept coming back to the water. She was right.
She was also right about another idea that has quietly become the heart of Page to Palette—the canvas tote.
What started as a practical way to carry books has become something much more meaningful. Every month, it collects another memory: an iron-on patch, a keepsake, a reminder that each story leaves something behind. Long after the books are finished, the tote continues telling the story of every chapter we've experienced together.
Over the next few weeks, we met twice, texted often, and somehow built an event in less than a month.
If I'm honest, I wondered whether anyone besides the two of us would want something like this. Creating Page to Palette meant putting a dream I'd carried around quietly for years into the world, hoping someone else would see what I saw.
They did.
Five readers joined us that evening, and by the time the sun slipped behind the lake, it no longer felt like an idea.
It felt like the beginning of something.
We sipped refreshing drinks, shared pierogies in honor of Sue Florek, debated which Florek brother truly deserved Percy, braided colorful embroidery floss keychains just like Percy's, and ended the night gathered beneath sparklers celebrating Victoria Day—the unofficial beginning of Canadian summer.
For a few hours, Barry's Bay didn't feel fictional anymore.
It felt real.
The photographs that follow are our attempt to hold onto those moments just a little longer—and to invite you into them.
Because if there's one thing I've learned from this first chapter, it's that stories are even better when they're shared.
