The Summer I turned pretty – Jenny Han

Title: The summer I turned pretty
Author: Jenny Han
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Teen, Drama
Pages: 304
My Rating: 5/10

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In the summer I turned pretty

Belly spends her summers together with her brother (Steven), her mother, her mother’s best friend Suzanna and her children Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly’s looks changed a lot in the last year and she is becoming a young woman and suddenly the boys are seeing her differently. Belly always had a crush on Conrad, but she thinks Conrad still sees her as his little sister. He has been acting weird too all summer long and she thinks it is because of her but is it? Because Belly thinks she has no chance of dating Conrad, she starts dating Cam.

Review

I know Jenny Han from the popular book series ‘To all the boys I’ve loved before’, which is also now a series on Netflix. I knew she also wrote ‘The summer I turned pretty’ book series and it was on my wishlist for ages, but I never read it. I am not sure why I did not buy the books and start reading them. Maybe I was afraid it would let me down or I just wanted to read other books instead. But not too long ago, I saw Taylor Swift uploading a new music video and I only thought it was just a music video. But it turns out it is also going to be the soundtrack of ‘The summer I turned pretty’ on Prime. That was for me the reason to buy the whole series and start reading them. I don’t have Prime yet, but maybe I will get it for this series. Then I can also check out if Prime has a better selection of feel-good series and movies.

Anyway, back to the book. I liked ‘To all the boys I’ve loved before’ but I am going, to be honest with you. I was not the biggest fan of the first book of ‘The summer I turned pretty’. I had this feeling that nothing exciting was happening. Belly was having a huge crush on Conrad but she starts to hang out with Cam. I think it was to make Conrad jealous. This book felt more like a diary too and sometimes a chapter in a diary can be like this: Today I swam in the pool and went to the beach and a party in the evening. It was a little bit too boring for me.

I am also not sure if I like Belly that much. She is the main character of this book, so I should like her right? Maybe I am now too old for this book. I mean, I am turning 30 in a few days. This book is more for teenagers, but sometimes I like to read those too. But I guess not this one. I bought the whole series. It was a 3 in 1 e-book and since I already have the other books on my e-book I am still going to read those. Maybe I will change my mind about these books, maybe I won’t.

But for now, I feel disappointed. I saw several social media posts from other people and they were so excited about the series because it is their favourite book. Maybe my expectations were just too high for this book. But who knows what is going to happen in book 2 and book 3. And maybe I will like the series on Prime better than the books eventually. That rarely happens, to be honest, so I am not trying to be hopeful.

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