The Summer I Turned Pretty

By Jenny Han
Simon & Schuster, $16.99, 277 pages

Belly is starting another summer at her mother’s best friend’s beach house. It’s what she and her mother and older brother have always done with the Fisher family, and she can’t imagine a summer doing anything different. In fact, she waits all year for those months spent at the beach house. Susannah’s sons, Conrad and Jeremiah, play big roles in her anticipation. Belly is so close with Jeremiah that he is like another brother to her, and Conrad … well, the older Conrad has been her unattainable love for years. This summer, however, starts to feel different. Belly is about to turn 16, and boys are starting to notice her. She even starts to hope that maybe Conrad might see her as more than a little tag-along girl. But something else is different, too, a dynamic shifting in the two families’ dependable summer lives. Belly doesn’t know what’s going on, only that she wants to soak up every moment of the “summer she turned pretty.” Jenny Han’s book is a delightful and touching read, full of true thoughts and feelings just about any teen girl can appreciate and will want to savor like a cold ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day.

Reviewed by Cathy Carmode Lim