Every teenage girl envisions that perfect summer where she’s on the beach and has a summer romance. Ocean breeze, tan bodies, and summertime are the perfect combination to find love. Belly, from “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” has many interesting experiences this summer. This book is one of my favorites and is perfect for teenage girls.

This book displays a perfect example of unrequited love. Belly, two years younger than gorgeous Conrad, has been chasing him since she was little, to no avail. This summer, however, Conrad gets overprotective of her, which comes off less friendly than flirty. The best thing about this romance is that it isn’t a typical one where everyone gets a happy ending. Most summer romance books end in the two horseback-riding off the beach into their perfect little lives. This book has a realistic take on Belly’s struggles and need for Conrad. The plot is a perfect blend of everything—humorous, suspenseful, and sad. You fall in love with all the male characters in this book. Each has a completely different personality from the next, yet they’re all irresistible. If I was Belly, the only guy I would completely check off the list was her brother, Steven. I loved how you get to pick sides between the guys—Conrad, the buff, soft-spoken musician, or his younger brother, Jeremiah, the loud, tan, blond-haired, bubbly best friend. I liked how the dramatic irony throughout turned into situational. Belly reassures us that no one knows her love for Conrad. Then Jeremiah reveals everyone has known about it since she was eleven. If we had known this from the beginning, every word or action Conrad had done would have made the reader feel different, and they would have taken a different perspective on his feelings for Belly. I liked that we could go back through the story and realize that he did know how she felt. Though this book is predominately a summer romance, friend drama back home mixes with it. This was just another way the book kept in touch with reality, instead of becoming a long, predictable summer fairytale.

The one thing I really didn’t like in this book was Belly’s personality. Belly, the female protagonist, somehow manages to get three guys to fall in love with her over the summer. She is the one narrating the book, yet there’s nothing about her personality that is really phenomenal. She turned sixteen that summer, yet she was very childish. When the guys would playfully tease her, she would stick her tongue out at them, or go tattle to her mother. She was quite rude, very awkward, and wasn’t consistently funny. All she really did was gush over Conrad, complain about her brother, and cry. There wasn’t anything very special about her, and I was genuinely confused as to why they all fell in love with her. The book was also kind of repetitive about her feelings for Conrad. She talked about him a lot, to the point where it was a little annoying. I think it was easy to relate to her unrequited love, however.

If you’re in love with someone that doesn’t love you back, you can easily relate to Belly’s thoughts and feelings. Her summer love was cute, amusing, and wasn’t perfect like most are portrayed to be. This book was addicting, and I couldn’t put it down. I would recommend it in a heartbeat.