The Amazon Prime series based on the young adult series of the same name has audience members of all ages tuning in for the third season.
Are you Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah?
Even though the target audience and the main characters of the show are all teens, viewers of various ages have been tuning in to “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” an Amazon Prime series about a teen girl choosing between two brothers as she comes of age.
The show has become one of the top-performing on the streamer for women between age 18 and 34, eagerly anticipating the release of the show’s third and final season on July 16 to see who the main character, Belly, ends up with in the end.
“A good part of (that) has to do with nostalgia,” said Steve Granelli, pop culture expert and associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. “It depends on what your generational touchstone is … (but) it’s pressing that nostalgia button.”
The show and each of its seasons are based on a trilogy of young adult novels by Jenny Han, the first of which was titled “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” The books were originally published between 2009 and 2011 (which means some adult viewers may have read them as a teen).
Both the novels and the show follow Isabel “Belly” Conklin over the course of three summers in her teens spent at the fictional Cousins Beach. Belly has spent every summer of her life there at the home of family friends, the Fishers, and has long held a flame for Conrad, the older Fisher boy.
The series follows Belly’s final years of high school and first years of college as she experiences love with both Conrad and his brother, Jeremiah, as well as grief, friendship and the pains of growing up.
The show, which premiered in 2022, was met with a warm reception from audiences and critics and found popularity with teens and adults alike. The second season, which premiered in 2023, became Prime’s second-most viewed series with women ages 18 to 34 at the time and helped drive subscription growth for the streamer.
“There’s something to be said for a story that endures across many different mediums, through a couple of different time spans, and then is presented in a way that makes audiences kind of like sit up and pay attention,” Granelli said. “This show particularly does better than … a lot of the other YA-styled shows that you find a lot on streamers.”
While some fans might enjoy revisiting the books through the show, the series also expands on characters and storylines from the book, particularly the parents. This might be not only a function of the medium (a television show allows more time and space for certain storylines), but because some of the audience might be older and thus drawn to the adult characters, Granelli said.
At the same time, the archetypes and storylines in this genre tend to be familiar to people both from other media and in real life. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” features a classic love triangle with two suitors with opposite personalities (one is more outgoing than the other). The show also explores the types of relationships that exist between best friends and mothers and daughters.
The setting of the show also particularly draws on nostalgia and familiarity. The show is set in a beach town during summers off from school, recalling for many the feelings of freedom that came during this season as a youth. This common touchstone might trigger nostalgia in more viewers.
“It’s not that they’re relying on stereotypes,” Granelli said. “They’re relying on basic life experience and giving us an easy point of entry. … (Teen shows) are designed to draw you in at different points, but then also explain to you the storyline, which ultimately is based on identifiable or whatever it is like identifiable archetypes or identifiable stories.”
While the show deals with heavier themes, the fact that its main characters are young adults means it’s a little easier to follow than shows aimed at an older audience, said Granelli, adding to its appeal.
A hallmark of the young adult genre is that the stories tend to have a lot of “blunt” exposition, Granelli said.
“If you didn’t hear a plot detail the first time around, don’t worry because three other characters are probably going to repeat it over the next eight minutes,” Granelli said. “This is not going to be a hard, gripping, anxiety-filled watch. This is going to be something that you can kind of like settle into. You can have your attention bifurcated as you watch.”