JuicyTalk
Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty has ended its three-season run on Prime Video, but there is still a movie on the way and Han’s own novels if fans want more of the characters. The series and the book trilogy follow a young woman named Belly (Lola Tung) on her journey through grief, romance, and growing up.
The stories are originally built on Belly’s summer experiences with a pair of brothers, but the story expands to follow her other friendships, her experiences with love, and how she grows up because of them. For fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty, these novels will fill the void the streaming series and the novels leave behind.
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before Trilogy By Jenny Han
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before starts another trilogy by writer Jenny Han. If fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty want more romantic drama tinged with nostalgia, her other trilogy is a good pick.
The novels follow Lara Jean, a high school student who pens letters to her crushes when her feelings become too much to keep bottled up. When her little sister decides to mail the letters Lara Jean has kept hidden, her whole world changes.
To All The Boys has more comedic elements to it, but it is still a profound story about how first love can also be a coming of age experience for someone. If fans enjoy the trilogy, they can also catch the movie adaptations on Netflix.
Netflix even has a spinoff series about Lara Jean’s little sister, XO, Kitty, which follows her adventures in romance and growing up in South Korea. The growing universe has a lot to offer fans of the Prime Video series.
Summer Girls By Jennifer Dugan
If the idea of a summer romance changing everything is what most appeals to fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty, then Summer Girls is a good follow-up book.
In Summer Girls, Cass lives in a beach town that is flooded with wealthy tourists every summer. Her rule is that she stays away from what she calls the “summer girls,” daughters of the wealthy who are used to getting what they want and leave after being there for a few months.
Cass, however, is tasked with keeping an eye on one of those girls – Birdie. Cass’ father works for a wealthy real estate developer whose daughter (Birdie) is being punished for crashing her boyfriend’s car by having to spend the summer with her father.
Cass gets Birdie a job, and the more time they spend together, the more drawn to one another they are. The possibility of a deeper connection to Birdie surprises Cass, and it’s not unlike Belly being drawn to both Jeremiah and Conrad over the years.
Chloe And The Kaishao Boys By Mae Coyiuto
Part of the intrigue in The Summer I Turned Pretty is that Belly’s love life is complicated. She develops feelings for two of her friends who happen to be brothers, and they also both develop feelings for her. The relationships between all of them are altered as a result.
If those messy relationships are the draw for fans of Han’s series, then Chloe and the Kaishao Boys is a great next read.
The titular Chloe is a Chinese-Filipina teen living in Manila. She is about to leave for university, planning on attending in California, but her father wants her to stay close to home. Her family plans a traditional 18th birthday, and her father sets her up with one kaishao (or blind date), and then another, to find an escort.
While Chloe finds most of the situation awkward, she does start to fall for one of her dates, putting her in a difficult position as she faces what choice she wants to make for her own future. Chloe’s story might not take place over years, but she is confronted with the future and her love life just like Belly is.
When Javi Dumped Mari By Mia Sosa
One friend falling for another is a fairly common way to kick off the plot of a rom-com whether it is in a Young Adult novel or a television series. When Javi Dumped Mari takes a friendship from college and fast-forwards ten years into their lives.
Javi and Mari are best friends who promise one another to vet any romantic interest in each other’s lives. They make the promise when they’re graduating from college, and ten years later, it comes back to bite Javi when Mari ends up engaged to someone he’s never even had a chance to meet.
Javi has been nursing feelings for Mari for the last decade, and he does not want to see her marry someone else. He decides to spend the six weeks before her wedding trying to break them up.
This novel is definitely for those The Summer I Turned Pretty fans who want to see the story play out beyond a high school or college setting. It’s for those who might have grown up alongside Belly and are ready to read romance in the New Adult category instead.
Summer On The Bluffs By Sunny Hostin
Summer is the perfect season for romance and family drama, as The Summer I Turned Pretty has demonstrated so well. It’s also demonstrated in Summer on the Bluffs by The View co-host Sunny Hostin.
The 2021 novel is set in Oak Bluffs, an exclusive community in The Hamptons that is not only made up of old money, but is a historically Black community where free Black men in the Northern US began buying up property in the 1800s.
One of the families to own property there is that of Amelia Vaux Tanner. She and her husband built the house decades before the events of the novel, and she hosted her goddaughters there every summer. As adults, the three goddaughters arrive to spend time with “Ama” as she reveals she plans on giving one of them the house.
As Ama plans on moving to France now that she is in her 70s, each of the women wants to become the new owner of the house. They also each have secrets they are hiding from Ama and one another.
While this is definitely a more mature story than The Summer I Turned Pretty, it still has similar aspects to the story set primarily in the summer and the bonds between the women are a focus of the story. The Summer I Turned Pretty also focuses on female friendships, though they can get lost in the romance of it all.
While We’re Young By K.L. Walther
The relationship dynamics in the middle of The Summer I Turned Pretty have a lot in common with While We’re Young. Walther’s novel sees a trio of friends trying to salvage their relationships with one another despite the complications.
Grace, Isa, and Everett experience the “Freshman Year Fracture” after Isa and Everett date and break up, but Grace nurses a crush on Everett. Isa starts spending more time with Grace’s brother after, and the three friends find their friendship in jeopardy.
Grace is the one who decides to set things right as they head toward their graduation, giving them their own Senior Skip Day that involves hitting several Philadelphia landmarks, crashing a wedding, and reconnecting with one another.
While We’re Young takes all the relationship drama of three years in The Summer I Turned Pretty and puts it all into one book instead of a trilogy.
Nate Plus One By Kavin Van Whye
Described as a “fun” and “feel-good” story by the publisher Penguin Books, it might not seem like Nate Plus One has much in common with The Summer I Turned Pretty beyond that, but it does.
The novel sees childhood friends Nate and Jai heading to South Africa for the wedding of Nate’s cousin. Jai agrees to be his friend’s plus one to the destination wedding after Nate subs in for the lead singer of Jai’s band, who abandons the band right before a crucial contest.
The two are just doing one another a favor, except that Nate has had a crush on Jai for a long time. Unrequited feelings can complicate friendships, but actually addressing those feelings can lead to real growth, as Belly knows in The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Both boys learn about themselves during their trip the same way Belly finds herself during her relationships.
Fireworks By Alice Lin
Fireworks has a similar vibe for its central relationship to Belly and Jeremiah, but when the attraction between them first began, not when their relationship soured.
Alice Lin’s novel focuses on a pair of friends who reunite after a major life event – one of them moved to South Korea to become a K-pop star. Lulu is a young woman with plans before she heads off to college in the fall. Much to her surprise, her former neighbor Kite returns to town and upends them all.
While the romantic storyline takes place in the summer, it also has the nostalgia of past friendships like The Summer I Turned Pretty. More than just appealing to fans of Han’s novels, this one will also be of interest to anyone who is interested in the world of K-pop or K-dramas as well.
Along For The Ride By Sarah Dessen
Fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty could likely find a lot to love in just about any of Sarah Dessen’s novels. The YA writer often sets her stories in the same beachside town, so the vibes of her stories in general will fit for Jenny Han fans.
Vibes, however, are not enough to recommend a novel. Along For The Ride sees Auden live with her father and new stepmother for the summer. While Auden has never quite fit in with kids her own age since she has been raised around adult academics, she finds herself while working at a boutique and meeting a boy.
Auden might not have the years-long friendships that Belly has, but her bonding with her new friends and being able to open herself up to them is similar to Belly’s own growth. Auden’s struggle to tell her parents how she really feels is also reminiscent of Belly’s struggles with her own mother.
Also, much like The Summer I Turned Pretty, Along For The Ride has been adapted for the screen. The movie adaptation can be found on Netflix.
Every Summer After By Carley Fortune
If any novel is a good read for fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty, it is Every Summer After by Carley Fortune. Swap the beach for a lake, and the emotional pulls of the stories are very similar.
Every Summer After sees Persephone “Percy” Fraser spend six summers with her neighbors on the banks of a Canadian Lake. her neighbors are Charlie and Sam Florek, and Sam and Percy eventually go from friends to more before their relationship falls apart.
Percy only returns to the lakeside town after Sam’s mother passes away. When the two cross paths again, they have to confront the mistakes they made in the past and the connection they still share.
Ever Summer After is as though The Summer I Turned Pretty slightly aged up its characters to give the reader more mature relationships, so it’s a great way for readers to transition from YA novels.
The novel also has a companion book called One Golden Summer, which places Sam’s brother Charlie at the center of another story.
The Summer I Turned Pretty captured lightning in a bottle both on the page and the screen, and these books definitely have the same spark.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Directors
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Erica Dunton, Jesse Peretz, Jeff Chan
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Lola Tung
Isabel ‘Belly’ Conklin
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Christopher Briney
Conrad Fisher
