Show Buzz: Love, Loss, and Life Collide on the Coast
- Victor Castillo
- Feb 21, 2024
- 5 min read
If you are ready to dive into a world that will have you crying as hard as you're laughing, look no further than the Summer series by the one-and-only Ms. Jenny Han. For those of you regrettably unfamiliar with her work, I guarantee that if you haven't read one of her books, you've seen---or at least heard---of one of the movies or maybe our TV show of the month. She is the mastermind behind the highly popular Netflix movies To All the Boys I've Loved Before, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and To All the Boys: Always and Forever. Ring a bell, yet? Hopefully, but if not, you could always know her from her other adaptation in the form of Prime Video's The Summer I Turned Pretty series. Now, I'm sure that one rings a bell. If it doesn't, that's alright because we are about to belly-flop right into our show of the month.
Welcome to Cousins Beach
An idyllic seaside town in North Carolina and home to the summer home belonging to the Fisher family. Where the Fishers, joined by the Conklin family, spend one summer after the other, coming together between long stretches of winter apart. Where Belly Conklin spends year after year falling more and more in love with Conrad Fisher, while Jeremiah Fisher falls more and more in love with her. Where the two families escape from the world together and indulge in all the wonders of the summer. Where during one fateful summer, Belly finds her entire world turned upside down.
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer—they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one terrible and wonderful summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.
The Summer I Turned Pretty was the start of a trilogy that takes readers on a journey of love and loss as they experience the changing world that characters have to endure. When one fateful summer, the idyllic paradise of Cousins Beach turns from their summer escape into the town of their nightmares. The characters face the consequences of a love triangle amidst growing up and maturing, which also brings the challenges of adulthood and life-altering changes that are enough to make even full-grown adults fall to their knees. Han crafts likable characters and draws attention to their personalities and faults. Throughout the series, she creates a story brimming with raw emotion, where you will be kept guessing to see where the love story goes, and in which your heart will never know a moment of peace as you jump from one heartwrenching moment to another until you find yourself on the very last page.
Summer (2009-2011)
Beyond Books
The Summer I Turned Pretty is in no way Jenny Han's first foray into the world of live-action adaptations. As mentioned, Netflix created a successful on-screen franchise based on Han's other highly successful series, To All the Boys I've Loved Before. The films became some of the most popular on Netflix and star Lana Condor in the titular role of Lara Jean (X-Men: Apocalypse) and Noah Centineo (The Fosters) as Peter. The films also feature Ana Cathcart (Descendants 2) as Kitty, Lara Jean's younger sister. Cathcart went on to become the lead in her own Netflix series, XO Kitty, which became the first Netflix television series to be a spin-off of a Netflix original film.
A New Story Unfolds
Following the success of her films on Netflix, Jenny Han turned to Amazon Prime, where she assisted in adapting her other wildly popular series, Summer.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Belly Conklin is about to turn 16, and she’s headed to her favorite place in the world, Cousins Beach, to spend the summer with her family and the Fishers. Belly’s grown up a lot over the past year, and she has a feeling that this summer is going to be different than all the summers before. The Summer I Turned Pretty is based on the book by Jenny Han, who is creator and executive producer.
The first season of The Summer I Turned Pretty was met with many favorable reviews and a fanbase fit for a series that premiered towards the latter part of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was still bursting for the next binge-able series to come along. The Summer I Turned Pretty delivers on its adaptation, bringing the seaside town of Cousins Beach to life and breathing new life into Han's original story with slight deviations from the original plot and characters that jump off the page and drag you into their world. The second season of the show, adapting the premise of the second novel in the series, It's Not Summer Without You, once again delivers on the gut-punch moments of the original book while maintaining its originality. While some argue that the deviations from the original plot bring a new story that even readers of the novels can enjoy while still maintaining the familiarity of the books, others argue that it has been what makes the series fall flat. The second season receiving less of a positive reception is only one of the indicators singled out in defense of this argument.
The series stars Lola Tung, making her acting debut in the titular role of Belly Conklin, joined by Christopher Briney (Daliland) as Conrad Fisher and Gavin Casalegno (Noah) as Jeremiah Fisher. Rounding out the cast are Rachel Blanchard, Jackie Chung, Sean Kaufman, Rain Spencer, David Iacono, Alfredo Narciso, Colin Ferguson, Tom Everett Scot, Elsie Fisher, and Kyra Sedgwick.
Christopher Briney (left), Lola Tung (center), Gavin Casalegno (right)
The first two seasons of The Summer I Turned Pretty are available to stream now on Amazon Prime, and season three has been confirmed, with Fall of 2024 being seen as the most likely release time for the third installment, although an official date has yet to be confirmed.
Jenny Han is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series and The Summer I Turned Pretty series. She is the creator and co-showrunner of The Summer I Turned Pretty series on Prime Video. She's an executive producer on the films To All the Boys I've Loved Before, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and To All the Boys: Always and Forever, all on Netflix. She's also the creator and co-showrunner of XO Kitty, a To All the Boys spinoff series. Her books have been published in more than thirty languages. To keep up to date with Han and her upcoming works and projects, you can visit jennyhan.com
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