Below is the complete list of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of The Summer I Turned Pretty Books
About The Summer I Turned Pretty
Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty series is a three-novel coming-of-age story shaped by first love, family ritual, grief, and the painful realization that places associated with childhood cannot remain unchanged forever. The trilogy follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin across several formative years, with much of her emotional life tied to Cousins Beach, where she has spent summers with her mother Laurel, her brother Steven, and the Fisher family. At the center of that second family are Susannah Fisher and her sons, Conrad and Jeremiah, whose relationships with Belly drive much of the series. The trilogy consists of The Summer I Turned Pretty, It’s Not Summer Without You, and We’ll Always Have Summer.
The opening novel begins with a familiar summer transformed by the fact that Belly is no longer perceived as the child she once was. She has long loved Conrad, the older and more guarded Fisher brother, while Jeremiah offers a warmer and more openly affectionate presence. That romantic triangle is the series’ most visible element, but Han places it inside a much older network of attachments. Belly has grown up with the boys; Laurel and Susannah are best friends; Cousins Beach is bound to repeated traditions and shared memories. Romance therefore threatens more than individual heartbreak. Every change risks disturbing a family structure Belly has assumed will always be waiting for her.
Cousins itself becomes one of the trilogy’s strongest organizing forces. The beach house represents continuity, but Han repeatedly tests that idea. Summer initially seems separate from ordinary life—a protected season of swimming, celebrations, late-night conversations, jealousy, and possibility. As the novels progress, loss enters that space and makes nostalgia increasingly complicated. It’s Not Summer Without You is especially concerned with what happens when grief fractures the group and the future of the house becomes uncertain. Belly’s attachment to Cousins is inseparable from her attachment to the people she believes belong there.
That movement from idealized summer to emotional instability gives the trilogy its depth. Susannah’s illness and its consequences reshape the characters in different ways. Conrad’s withdrawal, Jeremiah’s openness, Belly’s grief, and Laurel’s own responses cannot be reduced to a simple romantic contest. Han is interested in how young people misunderstand one another when pain is expressed as silence, anger, impulsiveness, or apparent indifference. The same history that makes these characters close also encourages them to assume they know what others are feeling.
By We’ll Always Have Summer, the story has moved beyond the adolescent immediacy of one transformative vacation. Belly is older, college and adult commitments have entered the picture, and choices carry consequences that cannot be contained within a single season. The central relationships are tested by questions of trust, permanence, memory, and whether loving someone for years is the same as being able to build a life with them. The final novel consequently gives greater weight to the distinction between childhood longing and adult decision-making.
Although the love triangle between Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah became the trilogy’s defining popular image, the books are equally sustained by female friendship and intergenerational bonds. Laurel and Susannah’s relationship shapes the emotional architecture of both families, while Belly’s understanding of adulthood is influenced by watching people she loves face illness, conflict, disappointment, and change. This broader family context keeps the romantic story from existing in isolation.
Published between 2009 and 2011, the trilogy later became the basis for the Prime Video television series created and co-showrun by Han herself. The novels remain a compact progression from anticipation to loss and finally toward choice. Their lasting appeal lies in the way Han makes summer both a real season and an emotional measure of time: every return to Cousins carries memories of who the characters were before, even as growing up makes it impossible for any of them to return unchanged.