By Rachel Chen '26
Background
Jenny Han’s young adult trilogy “The Summer I Turned Pretty”, and its Amazon Prime TV show adaptation, holds one of the most popular love triangles known to the rom-com community: Conrad, Jeremiah, and Belly.
Published in 2009, the first book, "The Summer I Turned Pretty”, introduces our teen protagonist, Isabel Conklin, a fourteen-year-old half-Korean half-white girl. Isabel, Belly to her friends, along with her brother Steven and mother Laurel, visits the house in Cousins Beach every summer. The owner of the house and Laurel’s best friend Susannah is the mother of two missing vertices to our love triangle—brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. The next 2 books of the series, “It's Not Summer Without You and “We'll Always Have Summer,” take the two family's stories and weave them together using this romantic journey.
Conrad or Jeremiah?
The love triangle begins one ordinary summer when the Conklins visit Cousins Beach, the summer Belly turns “pretty”. Belly has loved Conrad for as long as her heart can remember, and somehow the colder he is to her, the more she desires him. Jeremiah, on the other hand, holds the persona of a Golden Retriever. An outgoing, bubbly personality is easy to attract fans, and slowly, the heart of Belly. She begins to wonder as the summer goes along, is cold Conrad worth the wait? Just the initiative that a friendship might evolve into something romantic is enough to keep readers at their toes, and Han does a great job of using this at the start to pave the path for the rest of the story.
What Effect Does This Have?
The fact that Conrad and Jeremiah are brothers is also what makes the love triangle so intense and attractive, gaining the series popularity, audience engagement, and more possibility to be adapted into T.V. seasons or movies. Ethan Calof, PhD candidate in English and Comparative Media Analysis and Practice at Vanderbilt University, calls this “social community formation.” Han also enables the fourth wall to be broken a bit when Steven and Belly’s best friend Taylor argue about whether they support Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah. This echoes online fan defenses of both sides, thus creating an alliance-like connection between the characters and the audience. Calof says, “If you’re drawing out a tense, emotional love triangle plot through multiple books, it strengthens community formation by encouraging readers to join teams for a ship war. And ship wars are not an accidental happenstance.”
Additionally, Han’s real secret is really weaved in the way the love triangle tips. She keeps the readers anticipating Belly’s next move. Will she wake up today and choose Conrad all over again? Or does she turn to give Jeremiah a chance? Spoiler alert: Han specifically makes it so that while it seems Belly only has eyes for Conrad, Jeremiah is the one she ends up with first. This causes great shock, and some distress, especially in readers that were waiting for the day Conrad finally looked back at Belly. Half the crowd is left with excitement while the other half dismayed. Han doesn’t stop there, though. She carefully tips this wobbling love boat back to toward the other side when the chemistry between Jeremiah and Belly starts to fade and waver, immediately sparking the hearts of Belly/Conrad shippers.
But the brothers’ love dilemma continues. Conrad and Jeremiah are both still standing on this seesaw. While the book series seems to have already determined their fate, Belly’s love life is still consistently changing at the hands of Han. The audience is biting their fingertips for what future will hold in the last season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty”.
Reference: https://www.vox.com/culture/23808725/summer-turned-pretty-love-triangles- romance
Senior Editor: Kelly Lee '25
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