The Summer I Turned Pretty: Review

⭐⭐.8

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"For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count. Summer was what mattered.

My whole life was measured in summers."

I have mixed feelings toward this book. It's a quick, summery read and does entertain, but I don't like Belly (the protagonist) and some other characters. I liked To All The Boys I've Loved Before waaay more than this.

I should start by saying that Jenny Han's writing is beautiful as usual. Reading her novels costs no effort, the words flow and you find yourself at the end before you realize it. It's also super easy to understand if you want to start reading in English!

On a down note: this book is full of flashbacks between the current and previous summers. So, we get a lot of information about the past, but I think things happen too quickly in the present and the actual summer of the title ends up being just a bunch of scenes and a feeling that there should have been more.

“It was a summer I would never, ever forget. It was the summer everything began.

It was the summer I turned pretty. Because for the first time, I felt it. Pretty, I mean.

Every summer up to this one, I believed it’d be different. Life would be different.

And that summer, it finally was.”

The plot isn't anything original but picking this up I think nobody expects to be blown away, it's a YA about teens and teen problems, first love and the summer everything got complicated. There are some heavier themes discussed. Susannah, Conrad and Jeremiah's mom is a cancer survivor (she's also my favourite character), but the majority of the book is about Belly's feelings and poor decisions. Oh yes, there are a lot of poor decisions.

“I wished for Conrad on every birthday, every shooting star, every lost eyelash,

every penny in a fountain was dedicated to the one I loved.”

Cheesy right? Well, you'll get a lot of these kinds of thoughts from Belly. She's obsessed with Conrad (and winning arguments). I know I was like this too as a young teen, but at some point it gets repetitive and you just want to shake her and scream: "Move on!"

Belly is super annoying on the whole. I couldn't empathize much with her because most of the time she's a sulking, self-entitled, little brat. Every single time she complains about others treating her like she's a kid throwing tantrums and guess what she does? She acts like a kid throwing tantrums! She's also aware many times of being selfish but doesn't do anything to behave better. I get that a character doesn't necessarily need to be lovable, but she's just plain dumb and a baby.

“I love Conrad and I probably always would. I would spend my whole life

loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married,

maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart,

the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s”

But let's move onto the big love interest. Conrad is either apathetic or a jerk for most of the book. I know he has his problems and reasons, and when the final plot twist is revealed his attitude makes sense, but he needs to calm down. I don't get why Belly is so into him, but maybe they're perfect for each other. The perfect miscommunicating couple.

“On the way out Jeremiah turned around and danced a quick jig

for me and I couldn't help it, I laughed.”

Jeremiah is like the sun. He's fun, easygoing, and always trying to make everyone smile. And he's a good friend, more than Belly's actual best friend Taylor. He has his flaws too but he and Steven (Belly's brother) may be the only teens with a bit of common sense. Well, not the only ones...

“This was Cam, a real guy who had noticed me even before I was pretty.”

Tadaaa! Meet Cam, the third guy no one talks about. This poor fella is actually nice and likes Belly, and she just treats him however her whim suggests. I think we need #JusticeForCam!

“Susannah wanted it to be some kind of perfect summer, where parents

were still together and everything was the way it had always been.

Those kind of summers don’t exist anymore, I wanted to tell her.”

As I said, Susannah was one of my favourite characters together with Laurel (Belly's mom). I feel like a story about their teen years would have been more interesting. I love their sisterly friendship and complicity and the way they complete each other. They're both strong women in different ways.

“I just needed to be on the beach. The beach would make me feel better.

Nothing, nothing felt better than the way sand felt beneath my feet.

It was both solid and shifting, constant and ever-changing. It was summer.”

Overall I gave this book 2.8 stars. Someone on Goodreads wrote "these books are terrible but I can’t stop reading them" and for me, it sums up the vibe perfectly. It's an easy summer read, nothing special, but goes down like water and if you're in a slump or just want something light to read, this may be it.

I also caught up on the Prime Video series adaptation, and I didn't hate it, but I "ugghhed" a lot. It's not that I don't like the series at all, but they're just very different. Some things don't even make sense. One time I facepalmed myself so hard it gave me a headache. While watching I kept asking: "Why would this new subplot add interest? What were they thinking?". It's like they took some major plot points (not even all of them) and added a lot of unnecessary ones, plus decided to include some weird and cringey scenes. I really didn't see the point of all the debutante thing, but maybe it's just me.

I have to say that after reading the second book some things in the series made more sense. I also wonder what are they going to come up with for the second season since in the second book almost nothing happens. We'll see.

Have you read it? Watched the series? Both? And most importantly, did you like it?

PS: Are you Team Conrad or Team Jere?
I'm Team Jere in the book and Team Conrad in the series!