The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Hann: Thorough book review

A sun-dappled journey through first love, family bonds, and the bittersweet transformation from childhood to something more

Remember that summer when everything changed? The one where you suddenly saw the world through different eyes, where familiar places felt charged with new possibilities, and where your heart seemed to beat to an entirely new rhythm? Jenny Han's "The Summer I Turned Pretty" captures that magical, terrifying threshold between childhood and adulthood with such tender precision that reading it feels like stepping into a memory you didn't know you had.

Summers at Cousins Beach

Our story centers on Isabel "Belly" Conklin, a girl who has spent every summer of her life at Cousins Beach in the beloved beach house owned by her mother's best friend, Susannah Fisher. These summers form the cornerstone of Belly's existence – the measuring stick against which all other experiences pale. "I live for summer," Belly tells us in the opening lines, immediately establishing the almost religious importance these three months hold in her life.

What makes Cousins Beach so special isn't just the salt air or the midnight swims – it's the Fisher boys: Conrad and Jeremiah. Sons of Susannah and fixtures in Belly's summer universe since before she can remember. For years, she's been the tagalong little sister, the girl they tease and tolerate but never truly see. Until this summer – the summer she turns sixteen, the summer she turns pretty.

The Girl in the Middle

Belly arrives at the beach house this year with something new: attention. The invisibility cloak of childhood has suddenly lifted, and not just the Fisher boys but seemingly everyone notices. There's Cam, a sweet boy she meets at a bonfire. There's the group of popular summer kids who suddenly include her. And most importantly, there's Conrad – brooding, distant Conrad – who has been the north star of her heart for as long as she can remember.

What I love most about Belly is her authenticity. She's not perfectly poised or impossibly wise. She makes mistakes, gets jealous, says the wrong thing, and sometimes can't see what's right in front of her. Her voice carries the perfect mix of childlike wonder and teenage uncertainty. When she describes her feelings for Conrad as "like a slow-burning fire that started when I was around ten and just got stronger and stronger," you feel the depth of her emotion – not just teenage infatuation but something that has grown alongside her.

More Than Just a Love Triangle

While the romantic entanglements form the framework of the story, what gives this novel its soul is the rich tapestry of relationships that surround Belly. There's the beautiful friendship between her mother Laurel and Susannah – two women who have weathered marriages, divorces, children, and life's disappointments together with unfailing loyalty. Their summer routine of wine on the porch, shared secrets, and unconditional support shows young readers what enduring female friendship looks like.

Then there's Belly's relationship with her older brother Steven, perfectly capturing that sibling dynamic of annoyance layered over deep affection. Their bickering feels so real you can almost hear it happening in the next room.

But perhaps most poignant is Belly's relationship with Susannah, her "summer mom" who sees and celebrates her in ways even her own mother sometimes misses. Their connection forms a beautiful counterpoint to the romantic storylines, reminding us that love comes in many forms.

The Secret Summer

As the story unfolds through present-day narrative interspersed with flashbacks to previous summers, we begin to understand that this summer is different in ways Belly doesn't yet fully comprehend. Conrad, always the steady center of her universe, has become distant and angry. Jeremiah seems caught between his loyalty to his brother and his growing feelings for Belly. And underneath the sun-soaked days and starlit parties runs an undercurrent of something serious – a secret the adults are keeping.

Han doesn't rush this revelation. Instead, she lets us experience the summer through Belly's gradually opening eyes, allowing us to feel her confusion, hurt, and eventual understanding as the truth about Susannah's health emerges. This pacing feels true to adolescence itself – that slow awakening to the complex adult world that has always existed just beyond our comprehension.

The Magic of Ordinary Moments

What makes "The Summer I Turned Pretty" so captivating isn't grand romantic gestures or dramatic plot twists. It's the small, perfect moments that Han captures with remarkable clarity: the familiar smell of the beach house when Belly first walks in each year. The ritual of the Fourth of July party. The feeling of being truly seen by someone for the first time. A late-night conversation on the beach. The way a familiar hand feels different when it suddenly becomes more than friendly.

Han writes these moments with such sensory richness that you can almost feel the sand between your toes, taste the saltwater on your lips, and hear the distant rhythm of waves crashing. Her prose style is deceptively simple, creating an intimacy that makes you feel less like you're reading Belly's story and more like you're experiencing it alongside her.

Growing Up Is Growing Away

One of the most bittersweet themes running through the novel is how growing up necessarily means growing away from certain people and versions of ourselves. Belly struggles with this throughout the summer – wanting to be seen as mature while clinging to traditions from childhood, pushing boundaries while fearing change, falling in love while mourning simpler times.

This tension comes to a head during the debutante ball, a tradition Belly initially dismisses but eventually embraces. The image of her in her white dress, suddenly understanding something about womanhood that had eluded her before, captures perfectly that moment when we step across some invisible line and can never quite return to who we were before.

More Than Just a Summer Romance

What elevates "The Summer I Turned Pretty" beyond typical YA romance is its emotional honesty about life's imperfections. It acknowledges that first loves aren't always forever loves, that parents are flawed humans with their own struggles, that sometimes the people we care about most will disappoint us, and that some summers mark the end of things as much as the beginning.

The novel doesn't shy away from the reality that life includes loss. Without spoiling too much, the revelation about Susannah's health casts a different light on everything that came before, transforming what might have been simply a coming-of-age romance into something more profound – a meditation on how we treasure the time we have with those we love.

A Timeless Summer

Though published in 2009, "The Summer I Turned Pretty" feels somehow timeless. Yes, there are references that date it, but the emotional landscape it explores is eternal. First love, family bonds, growing pains, and summer magic never go out of style. This timelessness explains why the book found renewed popularity with its Amazon Prime adaptation, introducing a new generation to Cousins Beach.

The novel ends not with perfect resolution but with the understanding that life, like summer, continues its cycle. Things end, things begin. People change, hearts break, and somehow, we keep going. As Belly says near the end, "Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August."

For readers who have never visited Cousins Beach, prepare to feel like you've returned to a place you've always known. And for those revisiting, you'll find the magic hasn't faded—like all perfect summers, it waits patiently for you to return, slightly different each time but essentially unchanged. In Belly's world, as in our own, summers end, but their impact on our hearts lasts forever.