The Summer I Turned Pretty - Jenny Han

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
Author: Jenny Han
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date Released: May 05, 2009
Pages: 276 pages
Format: Hardcover
Source: Borders

Summary

Some summer are just destined to be pretty.

Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer -- they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

 My Review:

I’ve heard a lot of gushing and good reviews about this novel, and that it has a lot of similarities to Sarah Dessen’s stories. Well, let me tell you, I do NOT agree, and I’m a HUGE fan of Sarah Dessen, and to compare it with her works? To be honest I find it insulting, even if Sarah Dessen herself said that this story was great, I just didn’t felt it. And it's not because I had a lot of expectations of the book, I swear I had never heard of it, but it seemed interesting, and It had a 30% off.

Belly is a great character, she is very easy to relate too, she’s a 16-year old, whose always been in love with this one guy, and now she sees a possibility with him, and the way she’s trying to find herself. I really liked Belly. But I just didn’t like Conrad- Conrad being the guy she’s in love with, I just found him plain annoying, and sometimes he was plain rude to Belly, and to me, he acted childish, even though he was the oldest and most “mature” between him, his brother – Jem – and Belly. And yes, at the end Conrad does look at Belly like more than a friend, but I really think she practically forced him, and I never understood her attraction to him. A lot more goes through Belly’s summer, she develops a few other crushes and suffers a few situations that were very hard.

The story has a lot of flashbacks of old summer memories of Belly, I just find long flashbacks completely annoying and total turnoffs, I set the book aside, like, four times minimum, and then picked it up again just to see what was going to happen.

And as for the end, I was like, What?! The whole story, the freakishly annoying flashbacks, and her struggles, for THIS! It's not even a real ending, and it leaves tons of questions unanswered, and then I knew it was a series, but not even the bad ending (for me of course) is enough to make me read the next one, or maybe I will, who knows?

Maybe I’m wrong, and crazy, and it’s the best book ever. I’ve just heard way to much good reviews, the curious thing is that, all the good review I’ve read are from older people, I suppose it reminds them of when they were young. I simply didn’t found it great. I’ll leave this book to you guys, you should read it and make your own opinion, I just never found the spark.

 

"I can't believe you're really here."
He sounds almost shy when he says, "Me neither." And then he hesitates. "Are you still coming with me?"
I cant believe he even has to ask. I would go anywhere. "Yes," I tell him. It feels like nothing else exists outside of that word, this moment. There's just us. Everything that happened this past summer and every summer before it, has all led up to this.