Spoilers for One Golden Summer ahead.
This summer is already golden.
And not just because Carley Fortune is diving back into the world of Barry’s Bay to, at long last, give Charlie Florek his happy ending in One Golden Summer (out now). But when it came time to distill Charlie and Alice Everly’s lakeside love story into the perfect title for her new novel, she was coming up short.
“We really had a hard time coming up with a name for this novel,” Fortune told E! News in an exclusive interview. “Of all the books, this was the hardest.”
Her editor Amanda Bergeron’s solution? Let the music of Harry Styles guide them.
“Amanda was like, ‘You love Harry Styles. I’m going to turn to Harry Styles,’” the novelist recalled. “She was just looking at song titles and lyrics, and she’s like, ‘something, something golden.’”
And Fortune was immediately sold. “I was like, ‘Oh, I love the word golden. It’s so perfect for the book,’” she explained. “That’s how One Golden Summer came to be. So, credit to Mr. Styles.”