Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah?
Gone are the days of the great Edward vs. Jacob debate – now we’re all excited to see who Belly ends up with in The Summer I Turned Pretty. The cast confirmed that the hit Amazon Prime series will return for a third season in summer 2025.
Many have turned to Jenny Han’s original books in eager anticipation. But if you’ve already read the trilogy and need another summer romance, we have ideas.
What is “The Summer I Turned Pretty” about?
The Summer I Turned Pretty is a coming-of-age story about Isabel “Belly” Conklin, a teenager who lives for the summers. She doesn’t care about the rest of the year – she just wants to be at her beach house with her family and longtime friends. She’s known Jeremiah and Conrad, the sons of her mother’s best friend, for practically her entire life. Over the years, she’s considered them brothers, friends, and even crushes.
Belly has liked older brother Conrad for years, but he sees her as a little girl. And then there’s Jeremiah, who Belly realizes she may have overlooked for too long. Now that she’s almost 16, everything changes and both boys start to see Belly in a different light.
This series is a trilogy. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is followed by “It’s Not Summer Without You” and “We’ll Always Have Summer”.
Books like “The Summer I Became Pretty”
These books for young adults and adults are the perfect sequel to The Summer I Turned Pretty – full of fleeting flings, crushes on the girl next door, and the tantalizing possibility that one summer can change your life forever.
“Love and Other Words” by Christina Lauren
This is a similar story about childhood friends becoming lovers, except that this book switches between “then” and “now.”
“Back then,” Macy Sorenson was a teenager who was quickly falling in love with her best friend Elliot, who lives next door to her family’s lake house. “Now,” Macy is a pediatric resident engaged to a practical, financially secure man. “Back then,” Elliot and Macy spent summers and weekends bonding over favorite books, words, and growing pains. “Now,” they are unintentionally reunited, a decade after that fateful night when one declaration of love changed and destroyed everything.
“Some Other Now” by Sarah Everett
As in “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” 17-year-old Jessi Rumfield is caught between two boys from the house next door – Rowan and Luke Cohen – in “Some Other Now.” They are more like family to Jessi than her biological family. But when a tragedy and a chain of terrible mistakes change everything, the broken bond between Jessi and the Cohen brothers seems beyond repair.
A year of silence later, Luke re-enters Jessi’s life with a proposition: Will she pretend to be his girlfriend to make his mother happy as she battles a terminal illness?
“The Summer of Broken Rules” by KL Walther
In “The Summer of Broken Rules,” Meredith Fox returns to Martha’s Vineyard, where she normally spends every summer, for her cousin’s wedding. It’s also the first time she’s been back there since her sister died and she was recently – and unexpectedly – abandoned, bringing with it a whole host of complicated new feelings.
A game of Assassin with the family should take her mind off things, especially since her target is a very cute best man. But she also doesn’t want to be so distracted that she loses the game and ends up in another doomed relationship.
“Every Summer After” by Carley Fortune
In Every Summer After, Persephone “Percy” Fraser spent every summer of her childhood at a lake house with her best friend Sam Florek. For six summers, they were inseparable – a friendship that eventually developed into more – until she made the biggest mistake of her life.
Now, years later, Sam and Percy meet again at the lake to bury Sam’s mother. “Every Summer After” tells the story of six summer years and a unique weekend to put everything back in order.
“A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Mornings” by Laura Taylor Namey
In this teen romance, Lila Reyes’ summer plans are doomed to failure. Concerned about her mental health, her parents send her to England to relax and unwind with family friends. For some, summer vacation may be a dream, but for sulky Lila, it feels boring and gray.
Everything changes when she meets tea shop clerk Orion Maxwell, who is determined to make her summer a real experience by showing her the city and the countryside.
“One True Loves” by Elise Bryant
One True Loves follows Lenore Bennett, a recent high school graduate who is excited to start her new life at New York University in the fall. Her parents are under a lot of pressure, but luckily she has a family cruise to look forward to before the semester starts.
When her family gets chatting to another family on the cruise, she suddenly finds herself stuck with Alex Lee, an annoying, hopeless romantic. Sparks fly all over Europe in this summer travel romance.
The Infinity Between Us by NS Perkins
If you are looking for another summerj-For friends who become lovers, check out The Infinity Between Us. In this book, Violet Mitchell and Will Seaberg spend 18 years together with their families in a beach house in Ogunquit, Maine. But just as they are ready to put their years-blooming love into action, tragedy tears their families apart.
When they reunite after five years of estrangement, Violet and Will must face the price of true love and escaping their past.
“Going Bicoastal” by Dahlia Adler
Described as a queer “sliding doors” for young adults, this romantic comedy begins with Natalya Fox having to decide whether to spend the summer in NYC with her dad and the girl she’s always wanted, or in LA with her estranged mom and the guy she never expected. Through alternating timelines in both settings, Natalya must make her decision and face the consequences of choosing one summer love over the other.
“Same Time Next Summer” by Annabel Monaghan
In this nostalgic beach read, an engaged woman reunites with her first love, whom she hasn’t seen in 14 years. In Same Time Next Summer, Sam has the perfect fiancé, the perfect job, and is planning the perfect wedding. What’s not on her agenda is meeting Wyatt, who broke her heart when she was 17. When she meets Wyatt again in the place where it all began, it feels like no time has passed. Can she leave the past buried in the sand of her Long Island beach house, or will it follow her home?
“Better than the Movie” by Lynn Painter
In this “romance about rom-coms,” daydreamer Liz Buxbaum does everything she can to impress her crush, Michael, who’s back in town after moving away years ago. To help her, she enlists the help of her annoying but attractive neighbor Wes – who’s been a thorn in her side since they were kids playing pranks. With prom approaching, and as they plan to get Michael’s attention, Liz realizes there’s more to Wes than meets the eye.
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