Book Bingo Reading Challenge 2022! The Summer I Turned Pretty – Jenny Han

Morning Fellow Book Lovers!

I hope you’re all well and enjoying the sunshine. It’s definitely getting me into the summer spirit and I wanted to use that for my reading challenge this month *ignores the fact that there’s four weeks of school left…* I decided to go with Read a book that’s full of sunshine for this month. Personally, to me there’s only ever going to be one winner: Jenny Han. I absolutely adored the Lara Jean series so I knew I would love the next trilogy she’s written. Of course, I’m talking about The Summer I Turned Pretty. I hope you love it as much as I did!

What’s it all about?

The protagonist of this novel is Isabel ‘Belly’ Conklin, her brother Steven and their best friends, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. Belly’s mother and Jeremiah and Conrad’s mother, Susannah are best friends and every summer they head to the beach house. All of these summer breaks lead to one thing: love. Belly is just realising how beautiful she is and how she is changing into a young woman. She’s only ever had eyes for Conrad but feelings for Jeremiah occur meaning that we have a love triangle between the three of them.

‘It feels like nothing else exists outside of that world, this moment. There’s just us. Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has led up to this. To now.’

The mothers, Susannah and Laurel, are best friends. Yet, despite this novel being a coming of age story about Belly, there is an ever increasing sadness and feeling that something is wrong with Susannah. She seems to be asleep more, spending more time in her room and more sadness around her. She promised Belly the summer of her life, seeing how beautiful she was, yet the sadness around her and her mother is hard to go unnoticed. Susannah is the character who seems to have all the answers, who can see things differently. Everyone turns to her and adores her. Her boys are fiercely protective of her.

‘She and my mother hugged first, fierce and long. My mother looked so happy to see her that she was teary, and my mother was never teary.’

Daughter to Laurel, Belly hasn’t really known her own beauty until now. She’s fiercely headstrong and a talent in the pool. But the boys only see her as a little sister, much to her frustration. The older of the two brothers, Conrad is a deep and intense character. There are times when he is thoroughly frustrating because he’s so difficult to understand. However, the moment came when things felt a little different between Belly and him. She’s always been interested in Conrad but he’s so closed off and emotionless that she never really knew where she stood with him. Does he even notice her?

‘The air felt different all of a sudden. It felt charged, electric, like I had been zapped by a thunderbolt.’

What about Jeremiah? He’s presented as the golden boy of the family, the younger of the two brothers and the one who is arguably the most loyal to Belly. However, he does become frustrated about living in the background. He too develops feelings for Belly and she does likewise. What does this mean for the group? To make matters more confusing, one summer they share a kiss, Belly’s first. What does this mean for them? Wasn’t it Conrad who she hoped her first kiss would be with?

‘He took. a deep breath of air and puffed up his cheeks, and then he blew it out so hard the har on his forehead fluttered. I could feel my heart start to pound – something was going to happen. He was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. He was going to go and change everything.’

Also in the mix is Cam. Another summer Belly meets Cam and he tells her how beautiful she is. They have a summer relationship, hanging out together, having fun together and sleeping in his hoodie. Does this work out? After all, he is the only one to notice all the amazing things about Belly and to tell her all of them too. Just the fact he notices her, really makes a difference to the group.

‘Things had been weird with me and Conrad and me and Jeremiah – an impossible thought crept its way into my head. Was it possible they didn’t want me with Cam? Because they, like, had feelings for me? Could that even be? I doubted it. I was like a little sister to them. Only I wasn’t’

So who gets the girl in the end? That’s for you to read and find out!

Final Thoughts

I loved this novel so much. It made me remember back to when I was younger and summer seemed to give you all the opportunities you could ever want. There’s a reason why YA is a booming genre and that’s because it’s honest and real. Jenny Han is an exceptional writer – I love her books and this one doesn’t disappoint. I cannot wait to get my hands on the other two books in this trilogy because I have to see what happens to the trio. This book gave me all I wanted and needed and more regarding summer vibes. I absolutely loved it.

It’s back to exam marking for me and admiring the summer weather from inside. I hope you all enjoy it! Until next time.

Big Love xxx

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before – Jenny Han

Hi Everyone!

I hope you’re all well and are having a great weekend. Whilst the rain is sloshing down my windows, I thought this the perfect opportunity to review one of the books I’ve recently finished: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. It was an absolutely gem!

What’s it all about?

Told through the eyes of Lara Jean Song Covey, this novel oozes personality and nostalgia. Lara Jean is a sixteen year old, half Korean, half white girl living in Virginia, USA. Her family is very important to her and she is close to them all. She has an older sister, Margot and a younger sister, Kitty. Her lovely mother died when she was young.

“When someone’s been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just clutching air and grit.“

However, she treasures a beautiful hatbox that was given to her by her. Inside she keeps love letters she written to every boy she’s ever loved.

Her older sister is at the age where she is preparing for university. Margot decides she wants to study in Scotland. In her eyes, this means that she cannot stay in her relationship with her boyfriend Josh Sanderson, so she decides to break up with him. This causes shock to Lara Jean because they’d been together a while and Josh was also their next door neighbour.

Following this break up, Lara Jean finds herself in her past as she previously had a crush on Josh. She finds these feelings start to come flooding back. When Margot left, Josh does admit to Lara Jean that she was his first serious crush. To understand these feelings, Lara Jean writes a long postscript for the letter she wrote when she was fourteen, after Josh chose her sister Margot, instead of her.

“If you were mine, I would never have broken up with you, not in a million years.“

Whilst walking down the school corridor, Lara Jean is stopped by Peter Kavinsky. He is one of the guys that Lara Jean wrote a letter too. He tells her he is not attracted to her and Lara Jean, at first, is confused. She soon realises that he is referring to a letter she wrote to him years ago after he himself received it in the mail.

Lara Jean is completely mortified but also doesn’t know how these letters have been delivered. She tells him what caused her to write the letter in the first place. When she was in seventh grade, she and Peter were with a group of friends when Peter kissed her.

Lara Jean leaves school and heads straight home to try and locate her hatbox. But it isn’t anywhere. She’s completely confused. That night, she heard Josh come over and hides in their treehouse. The following morning at school Josh asks her about the letter to him. She lies and denies that she has feelings for him and makes up the fact that she has a boyfriend.

Josh questions her further and Lara Jean says it’s Peter as his was the first name that came into her head as she sees him walking down the hallway. Lara Jean decides to jump into his arms and kiss him, much to everyones surprise. Lara Jean has to explain the situation to Peter who decides to go along with it to make his ex girlfriend, Genevieve, jealous.

Lara Jean and Peter set up a list of ground rules on how to act and behave around each other. The more time they spend together, the more confused Lara Jean feels confused about her feelings about him. Josh becomes jealous of Peter and when she confronts him about it, he kisses her and tells her he wants to be with her. The consequence of this is Lara Jean realises that she no longer has feelings for Josh and wants to date Peter for real.

“I didn’t fall for you, you tripped me!”

Lara Jean is convinced by Peter to go on the school ski trip. Peter tells Lara Jean that he also wants to date her and they end up kissing in the hot tub. The following day, Genevieve tells her that there is a rumour that the two had sex in the hot tub and Peter did not deny it. Utterly humiliated, Lara Jean avoids Peter all Christmas break.

“I delete the picture of him from my phone; I delete his number. I think that if I just delete him enough, it will be like none of it ever happened and my heart won’t hurt so badly.”

With Margot returning for Christmas it is decided that they will hold a Covey recital party, which they had every year before their mother died. Kitty unfortunately invites Peter to the party and he tries to talk to her. However, Josh tries to protect her and Margot ends up hearing about how Josh and Lara Jean kissed.

Margot and Lara Jean eventually reconcile but Lara Jean remains angry at Peter. Eventually, Kitty admits that she stole her sister’s hatbox and sending all the letters that were within. She wanted to get back at her sister for almost revealing her crush on Josh. All three sisters eventually forgive each other. Lara Jean also learns from Kitty that Peter really does care about her.

Kitty returns the hatbox to Lara Jean but this time filled with notes from Peter when they were fake dating. Lara reads them and has a change of heart. She takes out her trusty pen and starts to write a real love letter to Peter.

“Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That’s the part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

Final thoughts

This is one of the cutest books I’ve read in a long time. It felt like reliving my youth a little bit. Lara Jean is absolutely hilarious – I couldn’t think of a better teen narrator. I also love the close bond between the three girls. They’re each individual enough with their own voices and character traits which really helps the narrative. There are two other books in this series which I will absolutely read. It’s done nothing but made me smile.

Enjoy the rest of Sunday everyone!

Big love xx