Book Review: We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han

Warning: This review might contain spoilers about The Summer I Turned Pretty and It's Not Summer Without You.

At First Sight: Belly and Jeremiah have been together for two years, even attending the same college. And Belly is sure they will be together forever. And even after Jeremiah makes a mistake that shakes their relationship, she still forgives him and says yes when he asks her to marry him.

No one takes the news well, everyone saying they are too young and that if they want to live together they should just move in together and wait. But the more people oppose to the idea, the more stubborn they are about it.

So they set their minds on an end of summer wedding, at Cousins Beach, and go full steam ahead, even when the cracks in their seemingly perfect relationship begin to show. Jeremiah is always working, hardly helps with the planning, and Belly finds herself practically living with Conrad at the summer house.

Conrad has done his best to stay away from Belly these past two years, but with the end of summer approaching, Conrad can't stop thinking of the choices he made, the choices that pushed everyone to where they are now.

Second Glance: We'll Always Have Summer is the final book in the Summer Series and I was really glad we got to see a little bit of Conrad's POV in this one. I needed it. Because in the past two books I didn't find him appealing - Belly said he was, but I never saw it until I saw things from his perspective. And I was surprised at how touching it was, there were moments when Conrad really got to me, as he went through the reckoning of the things he had set in motion. I even cried a little because of him.

However, I had big problems with Jeremiah and Belly. From the beginning of the series, I found Jeremiah a little whinny, with an inferiority complex and in this book I also found him a little manipulative, and woe-is-me - which hardly makes him hero material in my book.

And Belly... Belly, Belly Belly. She lost me the second she took Jeremiah back after what he did. And for most of the book I kept thinking that she would have GREATLY benefited from a Sassy Gay Friend to jump in and tell her: "What are you doing? What-what-what are you doing? Look at your life. Look at your choices."

To talk about the ending, I'm entering a SPOILER ZONE though I'm not discussing it in detail.


SPOILER ZONE (highlight to see)

I felt cheated out of the ending. 

If I can say something about Jenny Han's writing is that she makes a point of showing rather than telling - is part of what drove me crazy during The Summer I Turned Pretty -  so I got to see all the sad, all the bad choices, all the consequences to the half cooked plans and not well thought out ideas. But when we get to the happy? It happens off the page and is vaguely summarized in two pages, and it felt like such a cop-out. 

I suffered and struggled with Belly, Conrad and Jeremiah for three books and close to 900 pages, and I never got to see them happy.

END OF SPOILER ZONE

Bottom Line: I was surprised to discover how involved I was with Belly's story. One of my friends even asked me why I kept reading if it was making me so frustrated and I told her I didn't know. I still don't know, but I think that's part of the power of this story. I didn't love it, sometimes I didn't even like it, but I'm not sorry I read it, I think it's a really good read and I can see how a lot of people will love it.

Favorite Quote: "There are moments in every girl's life that are bigger than we know at the time. When you look back, you say, that was one of those life-changing, fork-in-the-road moments and I didn't even see it coming. I had now Idea. 
And there are the moments that you know are big. That whenever you do next, there will be an impact. Your life could go one of two directions. Do or die. 
This was one of those moments. Big. They didn't get much bigger than this."


"Conrad was first, and I loved him in a way that you can really only do the first time around. It's the kind of love that doesn't know better  and doesn't want to - it's dizzy and foolish and fierce. That kind of love is really a one-time-only thing."

2/3

Book Review: It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

Warning: This review might contains spoilers of The Summer I Turned Pretty.

At First Sight: A lot can happen in a year, and Belly found out the hard way. At the end of last summer, it seemed like things were finally heading in the direction Belly wanted them to: she and Conrad - the boy she had loved all her life - were kind of together, and they even shared one magical night in the winter that had Belly thinking they would be together forever.

But then Susannah - Conrad's mom and Belly's favorite person in the world - lost her battle against cancer and things got bad quick, it was all over, and she and Conrad broke up in a two part debacle that left Belly feeling sorry and ashamed.

So next summer, when Conrad's brother Jeremiah calls and asks Belly for help with finding Conrad, who had taken off from school without a word and was at risk of being expelled, Belly jumps at the chance at making things right.

Their search takes them back to Susannah's summer house in Cousin's Beach, where the three of them have no other choice but face all the things they have been running from: Susannah's memory, their grief, the memories, and their feelings for each other.

Second Glance: It's Not Summer Without You is hard to talk about without giving things away, and I hope I didn't.

I'm going to start with the good stuff and say that I definitely enjoyed this book more than I The Summer I Turned Pretty. This book has a quicker pace and a more defined narrative arch, which was a great improvement for me since I found the first book a little aimless. I think I really got a better sense of Belly this time around, as well as Jeremiah and Conrad - but more on that later.

What still didn't work so much for me was the actual relationships between Conrad, Jeremiah and Belly; I felt they expected a bit much of each other and were constantly letting each other down.  This book infuriated me so much at times, there were just so many misunderstanding and near misses, and it was a little heartbreaking how things happened.

Belly and her not entirely thought out choices frustrated me a little but I also got to know her better that way. Same with Conrad and Jeremiah, but I still remain unimpressed by either of them. Jeremiah seems a little, well both like he's always trying to please and expects people to know and give him what he wants without him actually asking for it most of the time, and then he complains when he doesn't get it. And Conrad, maybe I'm just too practical but not even at sixteen I found moody, unreliable boys attractive.

Bottom Line: I definitely liked It's Not Summer Without You, it was a more dynamic read, and though I wasn't completely happy with where everyone ended up, I'm reading the last book - We'll Always Have Summer - right away, because I'm intrigued to see how it all ends.

Favorite Quote: "I didn’t get home that night until after midnight. We stopped and got dinner at a diner off the highway. I ordered pancakes and french fries, and he paid. When I got home, my mother was so mad. But I didn’t regret it. I never regretted it, not for one second. How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don’t. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember."

2/3

Book Review: The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

At First Sight: Belly thinks of her life in terms of summers, because they mean the staying at Cousins Beach with her mom's best friend Susannah and her sons Jeremiah and Conrad. 

Every summer plays pretty much the same: the boys and her brother Steven run around and she runs after them trying to get into their fun, and when she can't, she's happy to hang around with Susannah and her mom.

Over the years, Jeremiah and Conrad have been everything to Belly - her friends, the ones helping her brother flip her into the pool, her unofficial brothers and protectors, her crushes. But Belly has always known that The One for her is Conrad- the older, moody one who sometimes got the others to include her, who once taught her how to dance, the one who sometimes seems not to care at all. 

But the summer of her sixteenth birthday, everything changes. Belly has finally grown into her looks, the kind of looks that make Jeremiah look at her twice, the kind of looks that Conrad tries but can ignore, especially after another, new guy, Cam, notices them too and shifts everything off balance. 

But, in the end, that turns out to be the least of all changes that summer, as something sad is brewing in the background.

Second Glance: I'm going to come right out and say it: For me, this book didn't live up to the hype. I agree that the writing is so good and that really puts you there, in that summer house at a moment when everything is changing... but I also found the narrative rambling and aimless at times. 

I felt like nothing really happened in the book - the first half is just Belly remembering past summers that marked her relationships with both Jeremiah and Conrad - though things did pick up once Cam showed up, but in the end he was rather inconsequential. And when I got to the end, well, I would say it was cliffhanger-y, only that I also felt like nothing had really happened through the story.

For the characters themselves, well, Belly was likable enough if a bit self-absorbed (but nothing out of the ordinary for a teenager), Jeremiah and Conrad were OK, but I didn't swoon over either of them. And the moms seemed to be just there, in the background most of the time, and even if you can tell something is going on, and that you ought to be paying attention to that, Belly doesn't so you don't either, even if you guess what's going on before the end.

Bottom Line: Over all, I think The Summer I Turned Pretty is a very good summer read, but I kept wanting more and I didn't get it. At some points, though, Jenny Han hit these passages and did put me there and it was great, it just didn't happen as often as I hoped for. 

Favorite Quote: "The problem was, I didn't entirely know. I guessed it was mostly the way he was making me feel all mixed-up inside. Being nice to me one minute and cold the next. He made me remember things I didn't want to remember. Not now. Things were really going well with Cam, but every time I thought I Was sure about him, Conrad would look at me a certain way, or twirl me, or call me Bells, and it all went to crap."