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Review: The Summer I Turned Pretty

The Summer I Turned Pretty The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I couldn't sleep so I picked this up and ended up finishing The Summer I Turned Pretty at 2:30 in the morning.

This book is about the main character Belly and her family who always go to her mom's best friend's beach house every summer. I hope that made sense. Belly's mom's best friend has two sons that Belly has known since forever, and things get complicated. This book reminds me of the anime Peach Girl... a lot. I also predict that this will have the same ending, romace-wise.

I had really low expectations at the start of this book because I heard that people liked it, but then I heard that some other people didn't like it, so that was the negative impression I was left with. Either way this book had a rocky start. Because of my unenthusiasm, I never really sat down and read the book. I always just read for 5 minutes waiting for the microwave, or 7 minutes waiting for my brother to come watch tv. This being said, I was still getting through a considerable amount of pages in this fashion because it's a super quick read.

The story is written in a bunch of really short chapters--some not even spanning two pages long--that alternate between the current summer and a mariad of past summers. It gives you the feeling as if you're just seeing a bunch of quick snippets into Belly's life, and I haven't read something like this in a while. As the story progresses the chapters do get longer, and it starts to focus more on the present summer.

Another thing I haven't read much of is the writing style. It's reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye in that you're really inside Belly's head. We get to read the story throuh Belly's thoughts as she thinks them which means the writing isn't very sophisticated. Though it's not quite like The Catcher in the Rye, I feel it's similar in that this can be very hit-and-miss. In the beginning the writing did kind of annoy me, but as I kept reading I got used to it.

All this was in the first 36% of the book. ((/r/theydidthemath.)) Then, as I stated in my first sentence, I couldn't sleep and then I just didn't want to. I picked it up thinking, "Oh I'll just read a bit and I'll get tired after like 20 pages." WRONG. I don't know if that was when the story picked up, or it was because I was being more focused on it or what, but I couldn't put it down. It also helped that I was speeding through it and ended up finishing the book before I knew it.

The story was your average contemporary summer read with boys and parties and annoying parents and all that. What made this book pretty good was the characters. I didn't even realize it, but I really grew to care about a number of characters in the span of these 276 pages. It was the weirdest thing when near the end of the book, and I don't know if this is a spoiler but, (view spoiler) SO YEAH. THE CHARACTERS. AHEM, YES. They were uh, good. I liked them. Specifically the brothers, which for some reason I wasn't expecting to like. (view spoiler)

Read this if you like summer contemporaries, and maybe not if you're super into high action or fantasy because it's very.... life. No action whatsoever. Maybe a smidgen dull at a point or two, but for contemporary fans it shouldn't be a problem.

It is now 3:27 am, what is life.


Click to read all of my Summer Reviews:
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3


*Ninja edit:*
I JUST READ THIS (whoops capslock) review by Ruth and it was HILARIOUS! It's a good contrast to my mostly positive review and I liked it so much I want to link it here, enjoy: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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