REVIEW: ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 2 Keeps The Heat On Simmer

Last summer ended pretty hard. Adapted from Jenny Han’s It’s Not Summer Without You, the sequel to The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 picks up a year later. Susannah (Rachel Blanchard died. Neither Conrad (Christopher Briney) nor Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) is on speaking terms with Belly (Lola Tung) after Conrad and Belly have broken up and Jeremiah remains upset about the whole situation. But Conrad’s gone missing right before finals, so Belly and Jere race off to Cousins to find him only to learn the reason he absconded in the first place: their house was put up for sale.

You have to go into this show with two clear expectations. First, the characters in this show have vast and unfathomable privilege. Everything that happens is only possible because they are wealthy, and while it’s not something they ever expressly acknowledge, the show also makes no apology for it and thereby makes their situation such a matter of fact that it’s hard to get too perturbed over how fortunate their situation is in the grand scheme of things.

Second, it’s a coming-of-age drama first and foremost. In The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 especially, this is paramount to everything. Of course, romance is part of coming of age, and there is a lot of anxiety around our central love triangle. But you will spend substantially more time crying about grief, betrayal, and the cost of growing up than anything going on between Belly and the boys. While it’s an ever-present part of the plot and the characters’ decisions, it often took at least an emotional back seat throughout the season.

In some ways, this was for the better. Spending another entire season watching the three of them fight over each other and have it get in the way of the far more important and interesting character arcs and plot devices would have sucked. It was still a bit cloying at times watching the same cycles of emotions, of will-they-won’t-they, and of flairs of conflict between them all. But the show also does well to remind you that this is normal — they are all just teenagers after all.

The new side characters in The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 elevate the season.

The two other pairs of side characters, Steven (Sean Kaufman) and Taylor (Rain Spencer), and Cam (David Iacono) and Skye (Elsie Fisher), really help drive this home. They provide a lot of the season’s levity where so much of the drama and tragedy surrounding our main three characters leaves little room for fun and shenanigans on their own.

Whether we’re talking about romance, debauchery, or wholesome bonding time, the kids all take big swings and accordingly, their misses are as big as their hits. I’m especially fond of Skye and the role they play in the group’s dynamic as initially an interloper but eventually an insider. It’s both a precious arc and helps illuminate just how well the show portrays the struggles of good motherhood and the sweetness of summer memories.

Where The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 struggles the most for me is in its initial pacing. The season begins with a split timeline, flashing back to the months between seasons as the summer’s chaos initiates. So little of the season’s opening takes place in Cousins that it feels like an almost entirely different show. The beach, the town, and that house especially are essential to the character and charm of the series and when we aren’t spending time there initially, I wasn’t sure if the show had any real value. Fortunately, that does not remain the case for the whole season by any means, but it wasn’t a strong note to start on.

Once the summer does get rolling, the show does strike the balance between good fun, difficult decisions, and plenty of romantic tensions. The latter isn’t nearly as impactful as the first time around, mostly because we’re too busy focusing on bigger and more important things, but it’s certainly kept on a simmer throughout the season and boils hot when it needs to. Even if the stress of that tension was sometimes a bit more than I wanted to handle on top of all the other really emotionally challenging elements of the season.

Through Taylor Swift tracks and lots and lots of tears, The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 doesn’t necessarily recapture the magic of the first season, but neither does it mean to. As the show makes clear itself, seasons come and go, and chasing fleeting feelings won’t bring them back. Instead, this season digs deeper into some of the greatest challenges, sorrows, and joys of being a teenager figuring out life and love with the people who mean the world to you in the place that means the world to you. It stumbles at times, but that’s life. On the whole, it’s a strong season that centers Belly and her choices above all else, even in the face of some truly difficult seasons of life.

The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 is streaming now on Prime Video.

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