The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer#1) by Jenny Han

The Summer I Turned Pretty
(Summer #1)
By: Jenny Han

Some summers are just destined to be pretty.

When each summer begins, Belly leaves her school life behind and escapes to Cousins Beach, the place she has spent every summer of her life. Not only does the beach house mean home away from home, but her favorite people are there: Susannah, her mother’s best friend, and her sons, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly has been chasing Conrad for as long as she can remember, and more than anything, she hopes this summer will be different. Despite distractions from a new guy named Cam and lingering looks from Conrad’s brother, Jeremiah, Belly’s heart belongs to Conrad. Will he offer his to her? Will this be the summer that changes everything?  – Goodreads

Expectations are a very dangerous thing. Its no secret for frequenters of my humble blog that I’m a huge fan of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. While the trilogy had its imperfections as it went along, it still had a lot of great moments much like the Netflix adaptations that still managed to capture the essence of the story from both a coming of age and teen romance angle. I’m not going to lie that the synopsis of The Summer I Turned Pretty wasn’t exactly capturing me a lot in the first place however, sometimes the actual read could give some surprises. The issue is that The Summer I Turned Pretty basically didn’t give me any surprises and was what I expected out of an average teen romance.

The Summer I Turned Pretty is pretty much a through and through teen romance. Its a little bit of coming of age and friendship but overall, its mostly focused around its main character Belly (short for Isabel) and her sweet sixteen summer. Belly is not a very captivating character, in fact as a main character from her point of view, it probably painted her out to be much more annoying than anything else. The deal is Belly has a certain grounded-ness, which is the good part like her insecurities as a teenager and trying to feel accepted in a group of friends. Those things worked in favor to her character however for the most part, she did make some pretty bad decisions or inconsiderate ones, although sometimes I feel that its my age reading this now that makes me see this more mature and this stuff is normal for someone at sixteen.

However, talking about the mature element, there are parts of this where Belly feels like she is more than sixteen in terms of how she views love itself and how she words certain things. Its a very odd character that’s been put together. Thing is, looking at the other characters, they feel even less fleshed out and while this inevitable love triangle between her and the brothers Conrad and Jeremiah, the two brothers also feel very lightly written and then the ending gives them a sudden shift.

This does bring us to the execution and structure for The Summer I Turned Pretty. The execution style is actually one that I do enjoy which creates something of a scrambled storyline as she talks about the current and then it links back to a past story regarding a younger self at the summer house vacation. Its meant to create context to give some depth for the story itself, which it does do for the most part. Even if the story itself doesn’t really feel that surprising most of the time, it still adds to the story itself to build up on the events that bring these characters together. That’s the main thing is everything is just about the events but never truly about the growth of the characters other than their expected growth due to getting older.

Overall, The Summer I Turned Pretty is very average. It all dials down to some rather lackluster characters stuck in a predictable teen romance situation. The best part of the story actually are the moments when its not about the romance and the vibe of how the summer house is with the two mothers and their kids in the little anecdotal chapters. Some of them show a rather heartwarming and positive family vibe. Its hard to talk about this one since it stands a bit in the middle. Considering the ending did feel like it had a resolution, it did feel self-contained which is a trait I love in books that are meant to be some form of series. In this case, I’m rather hesitant about reading the rest of the trilogy.

Goodreads score: 3/5

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