I’ve loved reading since I was a little kid. Especially through my middle school years of reading The Hunger Games series, I’ve particularly enjoyed watching a movie or TV adaptation of the books I’ve loved. In the summer of 2022, I was watching TV with my parents one night, and we decided to watch The Summer I Turned Pretty. Although a TV show intended for a teenage audience was likely not my parents’ favorite, I absolutely loved the first season, and read the book trilogy shortly after.

While I did not realize this at the time, the first book in the series, The Summer I Turned Pretty, was fairly different from the TV show. According to Cosmopolitan, in the book, the kids found out about Susannah, Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother, having cancer when they were younger. In the show, only Conrad knows about his mother’s cancer in the beginning, and the secret is not discovered by the rest of the kids until the final episode of Season 1, after Susannah insisted they have one last “normal” summer together in Cousins. This creates an interesting plot point that is different to the book, as viewers can tell that Conrad is acting differently, but don’t know why until later on. 

There are several other major changes in this adaptation, for better or for worse. Cosmopolitan noted that in the books, Conrad and Jeremiah are grappling with the fact that their parents are getting a divorce, while in the show, the divorce isn’t set in stone, but tension still remains between their mother and father. The debutante ball, a major plot point in the series, is completely nonexistent in the novels. The inclusion of this event created an entirely different storyline to parallel Belly’s coming of age story, and helped the overall plot move forward. This ball also allows Belly to interact with more characters in the show, whereas in the book, the only major celebratory events are Belly’s birthday and the Fourth of July.

There are several other changes that heighten the drama in the TV series, like Belly pursuing a relationship with Jeremiah, when in the books she rejects him in favor of his brother. One change I particularly enjoyed was the further inclusion of Laurel (Belly’s mother) and Susannah’s relationship. As I’ve gotten older, it’s been really interesting for me to see the complex relationships between adults, where in shows like this, it’s typically all about the teenage drama. 

As fans have been gearing up for Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, fans on social media have speculated that Belly will end up with Jeremiah in the end, whereas in the books, she ends up with Conrad. Although I love both characters, as someone who has read the books, I would like to see Belly’s relationship with Conrad play out on screen.

When it comes to book-to-TV and book-to-movie adaptations, I believe the stories should stay accurate to the major plot points. Although there are many fans of these adaptations who have never read the books, it just makes sense to me that the stories stay true to their original form. It is okay for adaptations to change smaller parts of the story to enhance the overall plot, as seen in The Summer I Turned Pretty, but it’s unnecessary to rewrite the whole story. Ultimately, the best adaptations find the right mix between authenticity and bringing a new life to the stories we know and love.