• Summer trilogy 01: The Summer I Turned Pretty on Powell's
From Jenny Han, author of To All the Boys I've Loved Before
"First in a series of three" with the disclaimer I read them all before writing this.
Plot, settings, and characters in The Summer I ["I" is Belly or Isabel] Turned Pretty are atmospheric and suggestive rather than grounded and concrete. This intro to bestselling author Jenny Han's Summer trilogy acquaints us with the Fisher and Conklin families who are every summer denizens of a New England down Maine beach house. We observe typical vacation activities, relationships, and misunderstandings—nothing out of the ordinary, even to a predictable degree.
You might enjoy this as a standalone novel, but experiencing kids and grownups getting older and gaining wisdom as their lives expand is the intention of any coming of age book, so I suggest you keep on reading into It's Not Summer Without You. By the conclusion of We'll Always Have Summer (volume 3), you'll discover Fisher brother Conrad has turned into the central character – an ultra-protagonist – ready to launch a decades-long dynasty that deserves at least a half-dozen more books and a classic TV or film series.
Volume 2, It's Not Summer Without You, continues the Fisher-Conklin narrative. Even after dying from cancer, Fisher matriarch Susannah continues her powerful and loving influence over the intertwined families. Author Jenny Han writes realistic dialogue within relatable human messiness of misunderstanding, betrayal, reunion, divorce, romance, and not-so-romantic situations. A reader can feel the teenagers grow in every dimension!
Even if I hadn't known most of the action happened along the East Coast, I'd still compliment how clearly Han elicits its overall style and sensibility. Really! Could the Summer Trilogy have been set anywhere else? No! Geography is destiny.
• Summer trilogy 03: We'll Always Have Summer
Teens love these coming of age novels; some of us who have achieved a level of chronological maturity enjoy them, too.
What person anywhere doesn't enjoy a beach read that's even mostly set in a beach town? This is the third and final volume of Jenny Han's Fisher-Conklin Summer series that unfolds like a dynasty in progress. My research revealed The Summer I Turned Pretty was a Netflix movie during August 2013; rumors suggesting it might become a TV series circulated for a while, but that still hasn't happened. Han does well with character development, particularly as ultra-protagonist Conrad grows in years, wisdom, and influence; even more, she creates dense layers of action and meaning that never quite resolve. However, in this volume 3, we get the happy resolution of Conrad's and Isabel's long-anticipated marriage. Now the countless readers who've loved this series can create their own multipart sequel, and/or wait for Jenny Han to do so.
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