Major spoilers for Every Year After are ahead! You can stream the series with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Book-to-screen adaptations changes are bound to rile fans of the source material up. And I get it, I do. Change is hard. When it comes to updates made to Every Year After, which is a show based on Carley Fortune’s book Every Summer After, there’s one big change I’ve seen fans freaking out about regarding Sam and how he learned about Charlie and Percy sleeping together. Now, as someone who has read the book twice and documented EYA’s changes, I have to say, I fully support this change and disagree with the folks who are mad about it.
People Are Really Freaking Out About Sam Not Knowing About Charlie And Percy
Now, the change in question is centered around Sam finding out that Charlie and Percy hooked up when they were younger. In the book, Sam finds out because Charlie told him not too long after it happened, and then he tells Percy he already knew when she tries to confess to him in the present. In the series on the 2026 TV schedule, Sam finds out in the present, and Percy is the one who breaks the news to him.
Many readers of the book were not fans of this timeline update and disapproved of Sam finding out about Charlie and Percy so many years after it happened. Here’s a TikTok from one reader:
@slamdunkreads ♬ The One That Got Away - Katy Perry
To an extent, I get it. This makes it a lot harder to forgive Charlie. It also takes away the fact that Sam had already forgiven Percy. That’s a hard change to deal with, as this TikTok user pointed out:
@booksbymel08 ♬ dashboard by noah kahan - kathia
So, overall, there’s a whole camp who do not approve of this change. I respectfully am not part of this group, and we need to talk about why.
I Actually Think This Secret Being Revealed In The Present Is Better For Every Year After
To be honest, I’ve always had a bone to pick with how the book handles Sam learning about Percy and Charlie. Yes, I get that it logically makes sense that his brother would tell him what happened. They see each other all the time, and I think Charlie telling Sam what happened earlier on makes all this a lot more forgivable.
However, this all goes down very close to the end of the book, and it’s resolved way too fast for how big an issue it is. To be exact, Percy reveals what happens to Sam on page 281 of 304; that’s 23 pages before the book ends. To wrap it all up that fast always shocked me, especially considering the gravity of the situation. We never got to see him react to what Percy and Charlie did; he had already processed it, and the conflict ended before it could even really start.
By having Sam find out in the present in the show, it gives us the opportunity to see him crash out on Charlie and Percy. That’s far more interesting for television, and it gives this incredibly intense story a minute to actually breathe and work itself out. It also makes this particular conflict a lot juicier. Now, it can stretch across seasons, and it opens a door for us to really see how Sam, Percy and Charlie all heal after all of this.
Overall, this change made for the 2026 romance adaptation is actually really impactful, and it left a massive mark on the story that will radiate throughout the series if it gets to go on. Drama is good for TV, and just hearing that Sam already knew about Charlie and Percy would have been far less dramatic. So, yes, I think the angry fans are wrong.
