When the final episode to conclude the series dropped, I took my place at the dining table. The world felt silent around me like it’s an event destined just for me. My mind scatters to recall the mundane and infuriating moments of the previous episode—often causing sweaty palms, anxiety, and excruciating heartache.
The show premiered in the summer of 2022 and continued until late summer 2025, spanning over three seasons on Prime Video. It is a book adaptation of “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “It’s Not Summer Without You,” and “We’ll Always Have Summer”—a trilogy by Jenny Han, who also served as the showrunner and creator of the TV series. Isabel “Belly” Conklin is the main character of the series and unintentionally indulges in complicated relationships with brothers Conrad—known for his quiet, brooding nature, emotional pain, and the oldest of the two Fisher brothers—and Jeremiah Fisher—the youngest of the two Fisher brothers, who is outgoing, joyful, and carefree.
The love triangle begins in season one as Belly’s summers at Cousins Beach spark a love triangle with her lifelong crush, Conrad, and his brother, Jeremiah. Amid Susannah’s cancer battle, who is the mother of the Fisher Brothers, Belly confesses her feelings for Conrad as he notices her. Their unrequited romance steadily ignites a relationship, but Conrad’s emotional unavailability and avoidance due to his mom’s cancer break them up. So, in season two, she is drawn back to Jeremiah as they fight to save the family beach house.
By the finale of the second season, she chooses Jeremiah, while Conrad leaves for California for his education. In the third and final season, Belly dates Jeremiah in college and even gets engaged, but ultimately realizes her lasting love for Conrad on her wedding day. After the wedding falls through, Belly travels to Paris to build a new life. At the end of the series, Conrad visits her and they reunite by confessing their love for each other.
Throughout the entire third season, I think the wedding plot was prolonged and should have been shortened to only 4 or fewer episodes than the original 6. Most of the time, Jeremiah was busy working at his dad’s company to help Belly with the wedding preparations. As a viewer, I was frustrated with the decline of Jeremiah’s character from the second season to a more careless, hostile, irrational, and inconsiderate person in the third season, making Conrad the better option. I believe that this is complacent writing as I couldn’t root for both brothers at the same time—one had to be the villain for the other to be the hero. Belly suppressed her romantic feelings for Conrad to date Jeremiah. I thought she lost who she was by clinging to the romance with both of the Fisher brothers. As a consequence, she lacked character development for the majority of the season because of her compromise to forgo a wedding that she didn’t believe in. In hindsight, her traveling to Paris was a breath of fresh air to escape from a crumbling world she knew and into unexpected adventures. Conrad, this season, felt underdeveloped and coasted for the majority of the season. I wish the show continued to explore him in California, uncovering childhood trauma from before and after his mom’s death, stop agonizing over Belly, and develop core friendships that impact his character. Although he got less screen time this season than in the last two seasons, I liked that the show grazed over his character’s complex personality and memories in episode five.
In the broader perspective of the show, it shows how crucial it is to have a personal ambition outside of one’s love interest. For Belly, she declined the opportunity to study abroad in Paris to prioritize her relationship with Jeremiah because she couldn’t forgo long distance with him. As for Jeremiah, he worked with his dad to please him so he could help with the cost of the wedding, despite his passion for becoming a chef—a true ambition that he wants to delve into. Lastly, Conrad concealed his true feelings of wanting to date Belly while she was getting married to Jeremiah. Unfortunately, his compliance to keep the peace between both of them resulted in an outburst confession of “I love you” to Belly a day before her and Jeremiah’s wedding.
With the conclusion of the television series and a movie announced, I hope the movie explores the Fisher brothers on good terms and rekindles their relationship. I would like to see Belly interact with Jeremiah in person. I also want there to be a heavy focus on Belly’s personal ambitions while she and Conrad are in a healthy relationship. In the end, the story leaves us with one truth—Belly didn’t flop; she rose with the tide.
