Inside ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3: All the Major Book Tweaks
Okay, I’ll explain, but try to keep up. Jordan Collins here, ready to guide you through the biggest shifts from Jenny Han’s novel We’ll Always Have Summer into Prime Video’s Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty. If you thought the show would mirror the book note for note, think again. Let’s dive into the time jumps, character decisions, and fan Easter eggs you might have missed.
Spoiler alert for those who have not finished the first two episodes of Season 3. Belly Conklin (Lola Tung) returns to Cousins Beach, but this time she’s wrapping up her junior year at Finch University instead of her freshman year as in the novel. That simple shift packs a big punch, because now Belly and Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno) have been together for four years rather than two when his cheating scandal with Lacie Barone (Lily Donoghue) lands on spring break. This change heightens the betrayal stakes and forces a deeper reckoning over their engagement.
Meanwhile, Conrad Fisher (Chris Briney) continues to cast a long shadow over Belly’s heart. As Belly’s mother Laurel Park (Jackie Chung) once pointed out, Conrad is the sun and when he resurfaces, everything else fades. Jenny Han told TheWrap on July 14 that she was excited by the show’s “satisfying ending as far as a TV show goes,” while still honoring her book fans. You may not have noticed, but that finale tweak is deliberate: the showrunners wanted to keep viewers guessing until the very last frame.
College life comes with small details that differ from the pages of We’ll Always Have Summer. In the premiere flashback, Belly’s brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) replaces her full name Isabel with “Belly” on her dorm door. In the book, Belly reluctantly embraces Isabel in glue-on rhinestones, but on screen she instantly reclaims her childhood nickname. It’s a neat bit of character shorthand that some book purists might overlook.
If you paused to examine Belly’s dorm wall, you may have spotted a playful homage to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. A snapshot of Belly and Jeremiah dressed as Peter Kavinsky and Lara Jean Covey pops into frame. There’s even a nod to P.S. I Still Love You hidden in a crossword puzzle that Conrad jumbles through. These Easter eggs remind viewers of Jenny Han’s wider YA universe without derailing the main storyline.
And let’s not pretend that everyone’s here just for the love triangle. Belly’s best friend Taylor Jewel (Rain Spencer) and Steven continue their on-again, off-again drama, expanding beyond the few pages Han dedicated to them in the trilogy. It feels like the writers saw fan tweets begging for more Taylor-Steven moments and delivered accordingly.
With episodes streaming every Wednesday until September 17, there’s plenty of time for more surprises. Will Conrad finally let Belly go? Can Jeremiah prove he deserves that engagement ring? Stay tuned, because even Jenny Han admits she’s proud of the story they’ve made. Glad I could clear that up for you.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and E! Online, TheWrap
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
