By Alex Martinez

The Summer I Turned Pretty is a book about a girl named Belly. Her mother (Laurel), her brother (Steven), and Belly go to the beach house at Cousin Beach with the best friend of Belly’s mother, Susannah, and her kids, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly has a crush on Conrad, however this summer she decided that this time is different and that she would get over him. The book goes back and forward to the present when Belly is 15-16 years old and back to when Belly is a pre-teen or a kid. Throughout the novel, we see the relationship between the teenagers. For instance, Conrad and Belly are distant during the book. On the other hand, Jeremiah and Belly are best friends; they tell each other almost everything. Steven and Belly even though they are siblings are not that close. The book talks about young love, the happiness of a friendship, family relationships, and dealing with problems during the teenage days. This book talks about really important things in a teenager’s life. Also, the writing of Jenny Han is fast-paced and immerses you every time into a new world. That makes you forget that you are even reading just words on a paper. That makes you feel that you are in each scene. As much as I love that Jenny Han does that with her writing, there were a lot of things that I didn’t like about her story. This book didn’t live up to the expectations many people give it. The story felt like a very stereotypical love story and was too predictable. The characters felt flat and I couldn’t make many connections with them. 

Let’s start with the main character, Belly. In some parts of the book, we can connect with Belly. For example, she felt excluded since she was the only girl in the beach house. Some people can relate to this if they grow up with siblings or family members of the opposite gender. They can relate to feeling excluded from playing the same games or having things in common. Another way we can make a connection with her is when she was a pre-teen or tween. We see that she felt insecure about her body since she was getting a bigger chest and getting much bigger in parts where it was normal because she was growing up. However, she saw how other girls her age were much more skinny than her and she started getting insecure about her own body. Here the reader can make a connection with Belly since many others were in the same spot as Belly. When we get to the perspective of Belly in the present when she is older, that’s when she becomes unbearable. She grew up to be whiny and always getting what she wanted. That is a flaw that she has and It’s fine for a character to have flaws. It is what makes a character feel like a person. Except, what was frustrating to me was that the author never wrote a scene that made Belly realize that she can’t always get what she wants. That she sometimes has to suck it up and live with what she gets. A scene that I detested the most was when Cam and Belly were hanging out. They were dating. Belly wanted to do skinny dipping, which is getting naked in the ocean without looking at each other. Cam didn’t want to do it because he felt uncomfortable doing it while the mother of Belly and her mother’s best friend were at the beach house and they could catch them. Belly told Cam that it was fine and that they wouldn’t get caught and started pressuring him into doing it. Even when Belly insisted on doing it, Cam still refused. Belly got mad at him and she just went inside the beach house without him. She stayed there waiting for Cam to apologize to her. Instead, Cam went away and left her a bottle with a note in it that Belly later found out that said: “IOU one skinny-dip.” It’s just frustrating seeing how Belly was just being immature about this and obnoxious. Belly was pressuring the guy into doing something he felt UNCOMFORTABLE with and he even explicitly expressed it to Belly. But, Belly was the one that got angry with him since he didn’t want to do what she wanted to do. The girl doesn’t understand that saying no to something is a boundary and she should respect that. Adding to that, the fact that Cam gives in at the end and tells her that he owes her. That is just terrible. He owes her nothing, it was his boundaries she was disrespecting. She should have been the one apologizing. Moreover, throughout the whole book, her only personality is that she is in love with Cam or Conrad. The whole series is just talking about the boys from her perspective. Either Conrad did this, Jeremiah did the other thing or Cam was doing this. We had some of the chapters where she was little or a pre-teen that told us some backstory of her. Still, we don’t get to fully meet the Belly in the present. We don’t have a deep dive into who she is as a person, what she wants, and why she wants it. I get it that it is the summer that she is trying to forget all that happened outside of Cousin Beach. That doesn’t mean that we can’t fully see who she is as a person. Yeah, the author does show or tell us that Belly has some hobbies like swimming or reading. Even so, that’s not enough for the reader to make a connection with Belly. Belly didn’t have any ambitions or didn’t show a way that this summer was gonna be better except when she said that she was getting over Conrad. There’s nothing to her that gives her a personality. Belly is just a blank canvas that only has some colors with the shape of an idea but doesn’t have a  fully developed image. 

Seeing the other characters of the book, the boys in the book make the book the most stereotypical love story ever. There’s Jeremiah. He is the “funny” brother, the happy one, and the best friend who is in love with the main character. Then we have Conrad, he is the mysterious one, the one who drinks and smokes. He has unresolved issues. Throughout the book, he mostly seems to have little to no interest in Belly. He was just nice to Belly sometimes. Cam was just part of the story to help Belly realize that she still loves Conrad. They all felt flat; they didn’t have anything unique. I couldn’t feel their emotions or feel anything that was going on to them. Even when we see Conrad and Jeremiah fall apart because of the divorce of their parents and their mother getting cancer. I couldn’t fully really feel their emotions, it couldn’t get through to me. In that scene, I could understand them a little bit more and comprehend why they did the things they did. I could grasp more about who they were better than the protagonist. However, the rest of the time the three guys felt okay in the book. In addition, I agree with a comment from Elena’s review in Goodreads about The Summer I Turned Pretty. She says “I hated every relationship in this book. none of them had depth. none of them even made sense.” I agree that the book didn’t have a great way of writing about relationships. One “relationship” I would like to highlight is when at the end of the book it tells us that Belly is still in love with Conrad. It showed that she and him ended up going together somewhere and they are happy together. The relationship felt out of nowhere. Conrad didn’t show that he was in love with Belly in any way, he was just sometimes nice to her.  Also, in the book it didn’t feel that Belly had any connection with Conrad. She just had a crush on him and that’s it. But, I guess they added that because there was no point in calling this a romance book if she didn’t end up with anyone. The stereotype of the protagonist being in love with the mysterious guy makes it predictable that they are going to end up together because “he was different”. From my perspective, I felt that it would have been better if she hadn’t ended up with anyone. It would have left a lesson that sometimes the people that we love don’t give us the same love back that we want. Even so, we should make the most of our own lives. That it’s our teenage years and there’s still more than falling in love. 

To wrap this up, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. If you don’t want to read characters that feel that they have no personality, stereotypical characters, and predictable endings. This book is not for you. The writing of Jenny Han is great and spectacular. But, despite her amazing writing. The story fell flat and ended up being such a disappointment reading the book. The book didn’t live up to its expectations. The storyline wasn’t as amazing as people say it was, it needed more to it. You should save up your time for another book that’s worth it because this one isn’t it.