The Summer I Turned Pretty Jenny Han
reviewed by Juliana Gallegos, class of 2015
The Summer I Turned Pretty may seem to be a book based solely on the outward appearance of a girl by just looking at the cover; but I can easily inform you, it has much more content that is not based on vanity. Belly, a 15-year old girl, spends each summer in a beach house in “Cousins” with her mother, brother Steven, and family friends Susana, Conrad, and Jeremiah. Susana, Belly’s mother’s best friend, enjoys the beach house more than anything during the summers and only wants the kids to enjoy it too. Her relationship with Belly I felt was the highlight of the book, because it was the only relationship in which Belly felt open and happy. According to Belly, this summer was going to be different, and it certainly was because she had “turned pretty.” Belly’s descriptions of Jeremiah and Conrad aren’t very similar, and by the way she describes Conrad you already know what she has her eyes set on this summer. Not only does she encounter boy troubles throughout her long summer days, but also realizes that she is still not considered “one of the boys.” This confuses her greatly, because she thought she would have received more equal attention now that her appearance had changed. Will she ever be allowed to join in with them? I felt she focused too much on her thoughts of Conrad to see that the boys really appreciated her; and when she later found out how much she did mean to them, it astonished me that she didn’t see it coming her way. When this is revealed, she is struck with an even more difficult situation to embrace. Had she spent her summer worrying about the wrong things? After all, it is the summer she turned pretty.
