Every time one of my favorite book series gets adapted into a movie or TV series, I get so excited and start to imagine how all the scenes will play out. From the sets, costumes and characters, the whole process ignites my imagination just like the first time I read the original novel. Once it finally premieres, I critique it heavily, as it usually comes out duller than my expectations. Or, it completely derails from the book’s plot in the hopes to become mainstream.
For example, when the third installment of the Divergent series included these helicopter-type machines that were never even mentioned in the book, fans became so disinterested that the final installment was never released. This was due to poor box office performance. Or when the last To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movie left out my favorite scene from the book. Film adaptations cut corners all the time when adapting from book to screen, but sometimes I feel like viewers can benefit from the context that some of these scenes offer.
When I was in high school, I couldn’t put down Jenny Han’s other series, The Summer I Turned Pretty. The story follows Isabel Conklin (Belly) through a love triangle between two brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. The story starts out with her proclaiming her love for Conrad (the eldest) then changing her mind once he became emotionally unavailable after his mother passed away. She then went for seconds with (younger brother) Jeremiah. Their love story follows them into college, where they face unexpected twists and turns and eventually end up with him proposing to her after being caught cheating. The lengths that Han went to in writing the complexity of her characters’ relationships really solidified my loyalty to her as a reader.
With all this drama, it felt like a natural fit for an eventual adaptation. Amazon scooped up the series and brought Han along the way as an executive producer. I was a bit skeptical since I was just freshly burned from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before but excited to see Han was brought onto the project as an executive producer.
Belly and her main love interest, Conrad Fisher, always had a complicated relationship throughout the novel, which was effectively translated on screen. But three seasons in, I actually feel more satiated with their dynamic in the show versus the book. We’re able to visually see their tension in the way they react to one another. We also get to experience the messiness of the world around them.
In the most recent episodes of the show, which aired in September, Belly set off to Paris for her study abroad experience — a plotline that deliberately strays from the novel. The virality of the series has helped the plot’s complexity bloom, and I actually find it quite refreshing for the characters to have such a different landscape. Dare I say the last season has turned out to be better than the last book?
One thing that really bothered me with The Summer I Turned Pretty books was that there was no big event that caused all the characters to rethink how short their life is. The TV series offers us Belly’s brother (Steven Conklin) getting into a car crash, which then gives us a little cushion to rationalize Jeremiah’s sudden proposal. In the book, he proposed to Belly right after she found out he had cheated on her as a way of apology (yikes) and the worst part was that she said yes. I remember feeling so outraged when I first read that scene and yelled “girl, get up!” to the pages. Now, I get to see the whole internet share the same sentiment that I did back then, even with the different stakes set up by the screenwriters. The show’s popularity, which has reached viewers who had never read the book, makes me feel more connected to the fandom and even more emotionally intertwined with the novel.
Don’t get me wrong, 17-year-old me still sobbed her heart out when I read that Conrad asked her not to marry his brother, while the beachside wind was blowing all the despair into his nicely fluffed hair. Watching the scene play out on my laptop screen was something else. It instantly transported me right back.
Although it deviates completely from the book, I love the Paris narrative in the show because of what it represents: it’s the first time we get to see and experience Belly as her adult self. In the novels, Belly struck me as dependent on whichever brother she was with at the time. But the expansion of the plot avenges my younger self, as I get to finally see her as a whole person with goals and ambitions. Honestly, she’s much more interesting to me in the TV series.
At the end of the last episode, Belly and Conrad have sex with Taylor Swift’s “Dress” as their soundtrack. As someone who’s been in the top 0.01% listeners of this song for the past 3 years, I was super stoked with the song choice. Belly then kicks him out of her apartment in the name of rejecting her old self. I mean, she has expressed so many times that she moved to Paris to move on from her old life, but then she says something that brought me to tears: “All this time I wanted to believe I changed. That I’m not the same girl I was. But I am still her, and was that girl so bad? She followed her heart no matter what. And despite all her mistakes, I have to believe she is still worthy of love. I still love her. And I still love him.”
Yes, Belly. As a reader and viewer of this series, this was the missing puzzle piece. She finally realized that all of her mess-ups and selfish moments were lessons that allowed her to elevate her life in this way. I feel like there’s a ton of fan input on how she’s so “selfish” and “narcissistic” for the choices she’s made along the way, but honestly, we start following her narrative when she was 15. We got an honest, vulnerable, and raw character. One that I personally don’t feel like I got to experience in the books.
It feels gratifying to see that this version of Belly, as a woman with agency, has become so popular with girls of all age ranges. The show has other surprises: Once the last episode neared its end, viewers were greeted with a written letter from Han herself thanking us for sticking with Belly through the novel and TV series.
She ends the letter with a cryptic, “Maybe we’ll meet again one summer in Cousins. Until then -,” and then signs off. If viewers paid attention to the media surrounding the last episode’s carpet premiere, they might have noticed actors Lola Tung (Belly) and Christopher Briney (Conrad) posing in front of a poster that read: The Summer I Turned Pretty: The Movie.
As a longtime reader and viewer of the series, I enjoyed the ending of the series but would gladly welcome Belly and Conrad’s healthy relationship having a little more screen time. I want to see the wedding, the planning, and if Belly finished college. Where do they live? Will readers get the ending they deserve?
There is no confirmed release date, but fans speculate we will be getting the film as soon as summer 2026.