By Dominique Tassell
The Summer I Turned Pretty is the smash hit of the season, landing on Amazon Prime at the end of June.
The series follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin, who navigates romance and other life-changing events over the summer of her 16th birthday.
Belly has spent every summer she’s ever had at her family friend’s beach house in Cousin’s Beach. She’s grown up with the Fisher brothers and has had a longtime crush on the older brother, Conrad.
This summer, he’s finally returning her interest. But suddenly his younger brother, Jeremiah, is also fighting for her affections.
The show was given the greenlight for its second season before the first season dropped, and Amazon had that confidence for a reason.
The show, and the love triangle it centres on, has teens on the internet thoroughly obsessed.
While the series shows an understanding of teenagers, and how selfish but not malicious they can be, I do wish they focussed a bit more on showing us the connection between the characters rather than telling us.
In the end, the most convincing relationship on screen was that between Laurel and Susannah, the mothers of the show.
Laurel, played by Jackie Chung, was the stand-out of the entire show for me. The relationship between her and Belly was a refreshingly realistic depiction of a mother-daughter relationship that didn’t villainise either character but allowed them to be flawed.
The acting chops on the show vary but are overall pretty good. A few of the younger actors come off a bit stiff, but that’s the price you pay for relatively unknown actors.
I, for one, am extremely excited for the next season to drop and itching to get my hands on the three books the series is based on.
All three books in the series are available as eBooks through Southern Downs Regional Council libraries.
