Beach author Amanda Baniuk releases debut romance novel All Those Summers

By JULIA SAWICKI

Nothing captures the feelings of butterflies, embarrassment, anxiety, heartbreak, and love quite like a teenage romance. It can seem like the most important and dramatic thing in the world. Author Amanda Baniuk knows that firsthand and has put those feelings to paper in her debut young adult romance novel, All Those Summers.

After rediscovering her old diaries from those years of her life, Baniuk realized they read like a young adult romance. The theatrics, the emotion; they were a time capsule of her teenage mind, a reminder of those formative years. For someone who loved writing and had long dreamed of creating a novel, the diaries provided the inspiration she needed to bring her new story to life.

All Those Summers is loosely based on the summers Baniuk spent on Buckhorn Lake in the Kawarthas as a teen, and on the summer romance she had there.

The story follows Blake, moving between dual timelines: one in the present day and one 17 years ago, when she was 15. When Blake has to return to Pine Tree Point as an adult, she reckons with the decisions made there, the friends she had, and her first love, Johnny.

Filled with nostalgia and bonfires, All Those Summers draws heavily on the atmosphere and memories of Baniuk’s own experiences, transforming those memories into fiction.

The diaries proved invaluable to capturing the essence of being a teenage girl in love. Within the novel, takes inspiration from real experiences and the emotions she felt, or at least how her 15-year-old self felt them.

“We had this big blackout out there,” explained Baniuk. “And I wrote about this moment I had with my then boyfriend. And it was so dramatic, just drama queen vibes. But it actually made writing the teenage thought process easier.”

That teenage perspective was something Baniuk wanted to preserve. The diaries reminded her just how intense everything could feel at that age, something that is harder to recreate once adulthood has replaced youthful whimsy with practicality. 

Social media has played a major role in promoting the book. “Bookstagram,” a side of Instagram where users discuss what they’re reading and share recommendations, is an increasingly popular online space. With many people dedicated to discussing their favourite reads, it’s no surprise that Baniuk’s heartfelt, sentimental and deeply relatable story caught its attention.

Baniuk already had some experience with the online book community. She had previously used Bookstagram while marketing a children’s book she wrote with Iphigenia Pheakos, What Spring Will Bring. That experience gave her a better sense of how to connect with readers and other authors, and the importance of adapting to new ways of promotion.

“Everyone is really supportive,” she said. “I love it. I just think it’s so nice to have women supporting women, and everyone’s there to be like, ‘yeah, how can we help?’”

“Everyone’s so helpful. That’s what I can’t get over,” she added.

After living in England, Baniuk returned to Canada, and with the help of her diaries, she began her first draft, writing it while at Buckhorn Lake. She reached out to a friend who worked in romance at Wattpad, a fiction writing website, who told her that the book had the potential to become a series.

Baniuk self-published All Those Summers but says that it “takes a village.”

She had previously self-published What Spring Will Bring, so the process wasn’t completely unfamiliar. That experience taught her just how much work goes into publishing a book, from formatting to printing and promotion, but it also meant she entered the process with a better understanding of what to expect.

Before deciding to self-publish, Baniuk said she sent around a hundred query letters to literary agents and publishers, receiving constant rejections.

“Then I was like, ‘Oh whatever, I’m just going to self-publish it.’ Even if one person reads it and likes it, it’s cool. I still have a published book.”

But the thing that really began her journey and gave Baniuk the push to get serious with publishing her novel was an unlikely and romantic source.

After completing the manuscript two years ago, Baniuk found herself wondering what had become of the boy who had loosely inspired one of the novel’s central relationships. The pair had dated briefly as teenagers but had not spoken in roughly 15 years. Knowing his family still owned a cottage nearby, when she went up to the lake, she left a note for him on their dock.

“We reconnected,” she said with a laugh. “Everyone was like, ‘You can’t tell him you wrote a book about him, that’s weird.’ But I did.”

He called her the one that got away. Now, they’ve been dating, turning the story behind the story into something that sounds like its own romance novel. Her novel sat on the backburner while they got to know each other as adults. Finally, her partner told Baniuk to take that leap.

“He was the one that said, ‘Listen, you wrote this book, you finished it. You might as well do something with it.’”

For Baniuk, what began as a collection of old diary entries and memories of summers at the lake has come full circle. With All Those Summers published, Baniuk is living out a dream she’s had for years, and in a twist, the story she wrote about young love ended up bringing a piece of her own past back into her life.

She said she is already working on a sequel. All Those Summers is available for purchase through Amazon, and indigo. For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit https://amandabaniuk.com/