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![The Summer I Turned Pretty: Now a major TV series on Amazon Prime (The Summer Series Book 1) by [Jenny Han]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41otJd6+g-L._SY346_.jpg)
The Summer I Turned Pretty: Now a major TV series on Amazon Prime (The Summer Series Book 1) Kindle Edition
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The Summer I Turned Pretty is now a major new TV series on Amazon Prime!
From the author of Netflix's smash-hit movie To All The Boys I've Loved Before, this is the perfect funny summer romance for fans of The Kissing Booth and Holly Bourne.
One girl. Two boys. And the summer that changed everything . . .
Every year Isabel spends a perfect summer at her favourite place in the world - the Fisher family's beach house. It has everything a girl could want: a swimming pool, a private stretch of sandy beach... and two (very cute) boys:
Unavailable, aloof Conrad - who she's been in love with forever
Friendly, relaxed Jeremiah- the only one who's ever really paid her any attention.
But this year something is different. This year, the boys seem to really notice Isabel for the first time. It's going to be an amazing summer - and one she'll never forget . . .
'This book has what every girl wants in a summer' - Sarah Dessen, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Read the next instalments in The Summer I Turned Pretty Series: It's Not Summer Without You and We'll Always Have Summer by bestselling author Jenny Han.
- Reading age12 - 15 years
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date3 Jun. 2010
- ISBN-13978-0241599198
From the Publisher


Product description
Review
Belly's dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place. Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend's flirtations during one summer's visit, a first date. -- Kirkus Reviews
If I could live inside this amazing book, I would. I would inhale the ocean air and soak up the sun, and I would hang out all day with kind-wonderful-funny-awkward Belly and her two known-'em-forever buds, Jeremiah and Conrad. I'd watch the three of them stop being kids and start being more...and I'd hope hope hope that when Belly falls in love -- 'cause you know she will -- she'd give her heart to the exact right boy. -- Lauren Myracle, author of the ttyl series and Bliss
This book has what every girl wants in a summer. -- Sarah Dessen, author of Just Listen and Lock and Key
This well-written coming-of-age story introduces 15-year-old Isabel, aka Belly, for whom summer has always been the most important time of year. Han (Shug) realistically balances Belly's naïveté with her awareness of the changes the years have brought. Han's novel offers plenty of summertime drama. -- Starred review from Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
We’d been driving for about seven thousand years. Or at least that’s how it felt. My brother, Steven, drove slower than our Granna. I sat next to him in the passenger seat with my feet up on the dashboard. Meanwhile, my mother was passed out in the backseat. Even when she slept, she looked alert, like at any second she could wake up and direct traffic.
“Go faster,” I urged Steven, poking him in the shoulder. “Let’s pass that kid on the bike.”
Steven shrugged me off. “Never touch the driver,” he said. “And take your dirty feet off my dashboard.”
I wiggled my toes back and forth. They looked pretty clean to me. “It’s not your dashboard. It’s gonna be my car soon, you know.”
“If you ever get your license,” he scoffed. “People like you shouldn’t even be allowed to drive.”
“Hey, look,” I said, pointing out the window. “That guy in a wheelchair just lapped us!”
Steven ignored me, and so I started to fiddle with the radio. One of my favorite things about going to the beach was the radio stations. I was as familiar with them as I was with the ones back home, and listening to Q94 made me just really know inside that I was there, at the beach.
I found my favorite station, the one that played everything from pop to oldies to hip-hop. Tom Petty was singing “Free Fallin’.” I sang right along with him. “She’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis. Loves horses and her boyfriend too.”
Steven reached over to switch stations, and I slapped his hand away. “Belly, your voice makes me want to run this car into the ocean.” He pretended to swerve right.
I sang even louder, which woke up my mother, and she started to sing too. We both had terrible voices, and Steven shook his head in his disgusted Steven way. He hated being outnumbered. It was what bothered him most about our parents being divorced, being the lone guy, without our dad to take his side.
We drove through town slowly, and even though I’d just teased Steven about it, I didn’t really mind. I loved this drive, this moment. Seeing the town again, Jimmy’s Crab Shack, the Putt Putt, all the surf shops. It was like coming home after you’d been gone a long, long time. It held a million promises of summer and of what just might be.
As we got closer and closer to the house, I could feel that familiar flutter in my chest. We were almost there.
I rolled down the window and took it all in. The air tasted just the same, smelled just the same. The wind making my hair feel sticky, the salty sea breeze, all of it felt just right. Like it had been waiting for me to get there.
Steven elbowed me. “Are you thinking about Conrad?” he asked mockingly.
For once the answer was no. “No,” I snapped.
My mother stuck her head in between our two seats. “Belly, do you still like Conrad? From the looks of things last summer, I thought there might be something between you and Jeremiah.”
“WHAT? You and Jeremiah?” Steven looked sickened. “What happened with you and Jeremiah?”
“Nothing,” I told them both. I could feel the flush rising up from my chest. I wished I had a tan already to cover it up. “Mom, just because two people are good friends, it doesn’t mean there’s anything going on. Please never bring that up again.”
My mother leaned back into the backseat. “Done,” she said. Her voice had that note of finality that I knew Steven wouldn’t be able to break through.
Because he was Steven, he tried anyway. “What happened with you and Jeremiah? You can’t say something like that and not explain.”
“Get over it,” I told him. Telling Steven anything would only give him ammunition to make fun of me. And anyway, there was nothing to tell. There had never been anything to tell, not really.
Conrad and Jeremiah were Beck’s boys. Beck was Susannah Fisher, formerly Susannah Beck. My mother was the only one who called her Beck. They’d known each other since they were nine—blood sisters, they called each other. And they had the scars to prove it—identical marks on their wrists that looked like hearts.
Susannah told me that when I was born, she knew I was destined for one of her boys. She said it was fate. My mother, who didn’t normally go in for that kind of thing, said it would be perfect, as long as I’d had at least a few loves before I settled down. Actually, she said “lovers,” but that word made me cringe. Susannah put her hands on my cheeks and said, “Belly, you have my unequivocal blessing. I’d hate to lose my boys to anyone else.”
We’d been going to Susannah’s beach house in Cousins Beach every summer since I was a baby, since before I was born even. For me, Cousins was less about the town and more about the house. The house was my world. We had our own stretch of beach, all to ourselves. The summer house was made up of lots of things. The wraparound porch we used to run around on, jugs of sun tea, the swimming pool at night—but the boys, the boys most of all.
I always wondered what the boys looked like in December. I tried to picture them in cranberry-colored scarves and turtleneck sweaters, rosy-cheeked and standing beside a Christmas tree, but the image always seemed false. I did not know the winter Jeremiah or the winter Conrad, and I was jealous of everyone who did. I got flip-flops and sunburned noses and swim trunks and sand. But what about those New England girls who had snowball fights with them in the woods? The ones who snuggled up to them while they waited for the car to heat up, the ones they gave their coats to when it was chilly outside. Well, Jeremiah, maybe. Not Conrad. Conrad would never; it wasn’t his style. Either way, it didn’t seem fair.
I’d sit next to the radiator in history class and wonder what they were doing, if they were warming their feet along the bottom of a radiator somewhere too. Counting the days until summer again. For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count. Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers. Like I don’t really begin living until June, until I’m at that beach, in that house.
Conrad was the older one, by a year and a half. He was dark, dark, dark. Completely unattainable, unavailable. He had a smirky kind of mouth, and I always found myself staring at it. Smirky mouths make you want to kiss them, to smooth them out and kiss the smirkiness away. Or maybe not away… but you want to control it somehow. Make it yours. It was exactly what I wanted to do with Conrad. Make him mine.
Jeremiah, though—he was my friend. He was nice to me. He was the kind of boy who still hugged his mother, still wanted to hold her hand even when he was technically too old for it. He wasn’t embarrassed either. Jeremiah Fisher was too busy having fun to ever be embarrassed.
I bet Jeremiah was more popular than Conrad at school. I bet the girls liked him better. I bet that if it weren’t for football, Conrad wouldn’t be some big deal. He would just be quiet, moody Conrad, not a football god. And I liked that. I liked that Conrad preferred to be alone, playing his guitar. Like he was above all the stupid high school stuff. I liked to think that if Conrad went to my school, he wouldn’t play football, he’d be on the lit mag, and he’d notice someone like me.
When we finally pulled up to the house, Jeremiah and Conrad were sitting out on the front porch. I leaned over Steven and honked the horn twice, which in our summer language meant, Come help with the bags, stat.
Conrad was eighteen now. He’d just had a birthday. He was taller than last summer, if you can believe it. His hair was cut short around his ears and was as dark as ever. Unlike Jeremiah’s, whose hair had gotten longer, so he looked a little shaggy but in a good way—like a 1970s tennis player. When he was younger, it was curly yellow, almost platinum in the summer. Jeremiah hated his curls. For a while, Conrad had him convinced that crusts made your hair curly, so Jeremiah had stopped eating sandwich crusts, and Conrad would polish them off. As Jeremiah got older, though, his hair was less and less curly and more wavy. I missed his curls. Susannah called him her little angel, and he used to look like one, with his rosy cheeks and yellow curls. He still had the rosy cheeks.
Jeremiah made a megaphone with his hands and yelled, “Steve-o!”
I sat in the car and watched Steven amble up to them and hug the way guys do. The air smelled salty and wet, like it might rain seawater any second. I pretended to be tying the laces on my sneakers, but really I just wanted a moment to look at them, at the house for a little while, in private. The house was large and gray and white, and it looked like most every other house on the road, but better. It looked just the way I thought a beach house should look. It looked like home.
My mother got out of the car then too. “Hey, boys. Where’s your mother?” she called out.
“Hey, Laurel. She’s taking a nap,” Jeremiah called back. Usually she came flying out of the house the second our car pulled up.
My mother walked over to them in about three strides, and she hugged them both, tightly. My mother’s hug was as firm and solid as her handshake. She disappeared into the house with her sunglasses perched on the top of her head.
I got out of the car and slung my bag over my shoulder. They didn’t even notice me walk up at first. But then they did. They really did. Conrad gave me a quick glance-over the way boys do at the mall. He had never looked at me like that before in my whole life. Not once. I could feel my flush from the car return. Jeremiah, on the other hand, did a double take. He looked at me like he didn’t even recognize me. All of this happened in the span of about three seconds, but it felt much, much longer.
Conrad hugged me first, but a faraway kind of hug, careful not to get too close. He’d just gotten a haircut, and the skin around the nape of his neck looked pink and new, like a baby’s. He smelled like the ocean. He smelled like Conrad. “I liked you better with glasses,” he said, his lips close to my ear.
That stung. I shoved him away and said, “Well, too bad. My contacts are here to stay.”
He smiled at me, and that smile—he just gets in. His smile did it every time. “I think you got a few new ones,” he said, tapping me on the nose. He knew how self-conscious I was about my freckles and he still teased me every time.
Then Jeremiah grabbed me next, and he almost lifted me into the air. “Belly Button’s all growed up,” he crowed.
I laughed. “Put me down,” I told him. “You smell like BO.”
Jeremiah laughed loudly. “Same old Belly,” he said, but he was staring at me like he wasn’t quite sure who I was. He cocked his head and said, “Something looks different about you, Belly.”
I braced myself for the punch line. “What? I got contacts.” I wasn’t completely used to myself without glasses either. My best friend Taylor had been trying to convince me to get contacts since the sixth grade, and I’d finally listened.
He smiled. “It’s not that. You just look different.”
I went back to the car then, and the boys followed me. We unloaded the car quickly, and as soon as we were done, I picked up my suitcase and my book bag and headed straight for my old bedroom. My room was Susannah’s from when she was a child. It had faded calico wallpaper and a white bedroom set. There was a music box I loved. When you opened it, there was a twirling ballerina that danced to the theme song from Romeo and Juliet, the old-timey version. I kept my jewelry in it. Everything about my room was old and faded, but I loved that about it. It felt like there might be secrets in the walls, in the four-poster bed, especially in that music box.
Seeing Conrad again, having him look at me that way, I felt like I needed a second to breathe. I grabbed the stuffed polar bear on my dresser and hugged him close to my chest—his name was Junior Mint, Junior for short. I sat down with Junior on my twin bed. My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it. Everything was the same but not. They had looked at me like I was a real girl, not just somebody’s little sister.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.
About the Author
From the Back Cover
Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has all led up to this. To now.
Every year Isabel spends a perfect summer at her family friends' house. There's the swimming pool at night, the private stretch of sandy beach . . . and the two boys. Unavailable, aloof Conrad - who she's been in love with forever - and friendly, relaxed Jeremiah, the only one who's ever really paid her any attention.
But this year something is different. They seem to have noticed her for the first time. It's going to be an amazing summer - and one she'll never forget . . .
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- ASIN : B0046ZRYVS
- Publisher : Penguin; 1st edition (3 Jun. 2010)
- Language : English
- File size : 2052 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 280 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,571 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Jenny Han is the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series; Shug; the Burn for Burn trilogy, cowritten with Siobhan Vivian; and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You. She is also the author of the chapter book Clara Lee and The Apple Pie Dream. A former children’s bookseller, she earned her MFA in creative writing at the New School. Visit her at DearJennyHan.com.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2022
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I really enjoyed Belly's story and the love triangle blossoming between her and the two brothers. It was a really fun dynamic, being as before this Summer happened - Belly was an outsider, the 'little sister' they didn't want to hang around with except when teasing her, etc. The boys treated her differently and after all those years of desperately hoping she'd be welcomed in to the group - also including her older brother, Steven - she had finally found her way in.
If you love a story that has you picking a team, this one is the one - Team Conrad? or Team Jeremiah? Personally, I was definitely more #TeamJeremiah because he was the most genuine and lovely brother of the two, treating her as the best friend she had always been. Even if that meant pushing his long-lasting feelings towards her away and accepting the fact that the only person she'd have her eyes on that Summer, was Conrad.
I wouldn't say Conrad is one of those bad boys you love to hate, or hate to love, but there is some arrogance around him and he doesn't have anyone's best interests at heart, except his own. He spends the Summer extremely moody towards Belly, treating her like the little girl he's always known. That being said, you could still see the care he had towards her, even if that care was only there because he thought of her as a little sister.
Whilst this book was definitely a light-hearted Summer read, there was definitely a more deeper story within the families, including an illness and because of this and other things such as the teens all going their separate ways after Summer was over - you could tell that this was going to be the last time at the Beach House where everything was like every other year before. I was glad to have read little snippets of previous Summers, as it would've been sad to see it all go so quickly.
The first instalment to 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' series was a great read, with the shortest of chapters (thank you Jenny Han!!) meaning I absolutely whizzed through this book within a day or two. I would describe it as a book that you can't put down once you pick up, however, that being said, it will only be that type of book for you if you're in to the cliche's, cheesy romances, love triangles, etc. like myself! I have grown to care for every character including; Belly, Conrad, Jeremiah, Laurel (Belly's mum), Steven (Belly's brother) and Susannah (Conrad & Jeremiah's mum) and can't wait to see what awaits them next Summer!
15-year-old Isabelle (Belly) is heading off with her mother and brother for a summer at the beach, with her mom's best friend Suzanna, and her boys Conrad and Jeremiah.
Belly has had a crush on Conrad for as long as she can remember, but he treats her like a little sister. Belly is hoping that this year things will be different and that Conrad will notice her as a girl for once.
What is special about this summer though? What is going on with Conrad? And who will be Belly's summer romance this year?
This was an okay YA coming-of-age story, but I would have liked more romance.
I felt a bit sorry for Belly in this book, and not only because they call her Belly! In the flashbacks it was obvious that the three boys all treated Belly like an outsider cause she was younger and the only girl, which wasn't very nice for her, and they hadn't changed much now that she was older.
Although there was a bit of romance in this story it was more a coming-of-age story, and most of the actual romance happened between Belly and Cam - a boy she met on the beach, which was a bit disappointing.
The storyline was okay, although I was surprised that Belly didn't catch on faster to what was going on with Suzanna, it was pretty obvious to me. It was a bit odd trying to work out which boy Belly was actually interested in at any one time, as she seemed to like Conrad, Jeremiah, and Cam at one point or another.
I thought the ending was okay, although I expected a bit more romance. I would like to read the next book to find out what happens next but at £5.49 for the kindle edition I think I'll wait!
I will say that this book has me longing for the summer and the beach though! I'm so jealous! I'd love to spend a whole summer at a beach house enjoying the sun, sand, and sea!
Overall; an okay YA coming-of-age/contemporary romance story.
7 out of 10.
I have To All the Boys I've Loved Before in paperback too, but after this I'm not in any hurry to read it.