The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP) is a book series adaptation released on Prime Video in June 2022. It is a coming-of-age show that follows the main character, Isabel “Belly” Conklin, starting the summer of her sixteenth birthday as she faces new challenges with her family. In the show, Belly and her family spend their summers in Susannah’s (her moms best friend) beach house with her two sons Conrad and Jeremiah.
In the first two seasons, Belly creates a lot of family drama by constantly bouncing between having feelings for both brothers. The issues are intensified when Susannah passes away, and she gets into a long-term relationship with Jeremiah after dating Conrad for almost an entire year . By the end of season two, Conrad is off to California for medical school, and Jeremiah and Belly are together.
Season 3 is a time jump of Belly’s relationship with Jeremiah over the course of 4 years. . Jeremiah cheats and proposes shortly after as a form of apology. Belly accepts (girl, stand up), but neither of their families approves (as they should, they’re 21). As they begin to plan the wedding and Belly and Conrad start getting closer (hmmm, I wonder what’s going to happen? It’s okay, a predictable plot can be nice), and she begins having problems with Jeremiah. When the wedding day finally comes along, Belly calls it off because she is still in love with Conrad. After the wedding is called off, she goes to Paris for a year and Conrad surprises her with a visit for her birthday. While he’s in Paris, they confess their love for each other, and the season ends with a flash forward to them being together and visiting the Cousins’ house.
Over the course of the three seasons, a lot of drama takes place, and issues are created in the family because Belly couldn’t choose who she wanted to be with. When observing the kids’ actions, it can feel like the emotional rollercoaster they go through is heavily influenced by their parents. Their mothers, especially Susannah, created a codependency bond with all of the children in different ways. She allowed Jeremiah to believe he was perfect while simultaneously always putting him after Conrad. She made Conrad believe that the world rested on his shoulders, and she constantly told Belly she was the daughter she always wanted and that she was always destined for one of her sons. When you take a step back, the way she was obsessed over Belly being with one of her sons was super creepy, especially because the bond that she created with the three of them was almost nonexistent with, Belly’s brother, Steven. It can seem like she had a lot of control over the kids’ personal lives, especially after she died. Having enough control over your kids’ emotions, to the point they justify all of their horrendous actions with “it’s what Susannah would have wanted,” says a lot of not great things about the person you were and how you raised these children to be.
All of the characters were emotionally immature. Belly would constantly come between the two brothers emotionally, deciding who she loved more on random whims, while simultaneously treating her mother poorly despite her mom doing the best she could to help Belly. She also yelled at Conrad multiple times during their relationship while he was dealing with the fact that his mother was dying. For claiming to be so “not like other girls” and constantly making rude comments about how her best friend treats men, she sure is very inconsiderate and self-centered. It started to seem more like she wasn’t fighting for love, and more like the beach house inheritance.
Conrad has the worst communication issues; he constantly lets people walk all over him just to self-destruct later. He would constantly let the people around him be terrible to him, then dealt with it by moving across the country and barely talking to anyone for four years. At least he got therapy, so props for that. While I’m glad he saved Belly from the terrible decision that would have been marrying Jeremiah, how did you yearn for this girl you entire childhood, finally get into a relationship with her, let her treat you horribly, then yearn for her for four more years. Oh, wait, it’s because Susannah created a terrible codependency bond with all of the kids.
Jeremiah was just an absolute overgrown man-child *queue the Sabrina Carpenter*. At first, you would kind of want to sympathize with him because he went through some things, but the way he acts is beyond redemption. It genuinely felt like a breath of fresh air when the wedding was called off. He was an out-of-touch nepo baby who couldn’t get a grip on the real world, and Belly didn’t need more of that energy in her life (she already had enough of that herself).
The ending was done well and stayed close to the book, which was good because the author had originally hinted at an alternate ending. Team Condrad was definitely the obvious answer, even though Belly didn’t deserve him after the way she treated him, but by the end, it felt more like team everyone should move on from each other and get therapy.
It is just scary to think about what they might try to do with the movie, because the only thing left out of the series was Belly and Conrad’s wedding. Ideally, they would spend the movie going through their wedding and start to touch on their married life with kids. Hopefully, they don’t create even more drama in these people’s lives.
