We'll Always Have Summer (Reprint) (Summer I Turned Pretty)

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Dang, don’t even get me started on how I don’t know how I was functioning still to read Belly and Jere’s conversation.

When it’s finals week and you’ve been studying for five hours straight, you need three things to get you through the night. The biggest Slurpee you can find, half cherry, half Coke. Pajama pants, the kind that have been washed so many times, they are tissue-paper thin. And finally, dance breaks. Lots of dance breaks. When your eyes start to close and all you want is your bed, dance breaks will get you through.I feel like a part of Laurel died that day when Jere announced that her seventeen-turning-eighteen year old daughter was engaged 😅. Finally, after three wonderfully suspenseful and poignant novels, we learn which brother Belly ends up with. Do you think Belly made the right choice? Were you surprised by her choice? Are you satisfied with this ending to the series? We see Belly’s relationship with her mother evolve throughout the three books in the series. In We’ll Always Have Summer, we’re privy to a compelling power dynamic between mother and daughter that hasn’t been as evident in the past. What is this power dynamic, and to what do you attribute it? How would you characterize the nature of Belly and Laurel’s relationship?

When Belly tells Anika about Jeremiah’s infidelity, Anika replies, “Keeping a secret like that from the person you love is probably the worst part.” We learn of several secrets in We’ll Always Have Summer—Jeremiah’s, Belly’s, Conrad’s. How much of what happens in this third novel is influenced by secrets? Is it ever okay to keep secrets? Is it ever okay to keep secrets from the people you love, in particular? Does she really have a future with Jeremiah? Has she ever gotten over Conrad? It's time for Belly to decide, once and for all, who has her heart forever. One of the hardest parts about going away to college—or moving, or simply starting a new school, for that matter—is making friends. Belly is tremendously relieved to be invited to her hallmate’s room to hang out with the girls. She confides, “maybe these were my people.” Who are your people? What qualities do you look for in new friends? What advice would you have shared with Belly for making friends that first semester of college? When I thought about it now, that moment, in the motel, I understood I was the one who’d set this thing in motion. Pushed them together. It was my doing. I was the one who was going to have to live with it. They were happy.” (pg. 165)I have nothing against people getting married young because I have many friends who were married young, I just didn’t like how they were getting engaged to rectify the fact that he cheated. That’s not okay. They should marry out of pure love and not desperation. If anything they should communicate about how to actually move past him cheating and to rebuild that trust and then maybe move in together to see how that dynamic works. Then they should get married. We’ll Always Have Summer is the most nostalgic of the three books in Jenny Han’s series. The title evokes the warmth and comforting permanence of memories. Belly is particularly touched by her memories of growing up at Cousins Beach, especially as represented by the images she recalls of Jeremiah and Conrad. Discuss Belly’s reaction to her realization that she’s had the story of Rosie, the dog, all wrong in her memory: “What else had I remembered wrong? I was a person who loved to play Remember When in my head. I’d always prided myself on how I remembered every detail. It scared me to think that my memories could be just ever-so-slightly wrong.” How much of Belly’s love for Jeremiah and Conrad is based on memories? How much weight can we assign to memories, as a foundation for current relationships? What kind of value does Belly put on her memories? To be honest, if Jere knew Belly so well, he should have sensed how stressed she was and stepped up 👏🏼! But he didn’t 🙃. Belly dismisses her fears as groundless until she overhears Lacie saying she slept with Jeremiah during spring break. Jeremiah admits that what she said is true, and Belly slaps him, utterly devasted by his betrayal. She tells him they’re finished. Belly has only ever been in love with two boys, both with the last name Fisher. And after being with Jeremiah for the last two years, she’s almost positive he is her soul mate. Almost. While Conrad has not gotten over the mistake of letting Belly go, Jeremiah has always known that Belly is the girl for him. So when Belly and Jeremiah decide to make things forever, Conrad realizes that it’s now or never—tell Belly he loves her, or lose her for good.

Now here we were, lying next to each other in my dorm-room bed. He was a sophomore, and I was finishing up my freshman year. It was crazy how far we had come. We’d known each other our whole lives, and in some ways, it felt like a big surprise—in other ways it felt inevitable. Jere does deserve someone who wants to be with him and someone who will give all that love to him and not have it split between someone else. If she loved Jere, she would love him with her whole heart and no less. Anyway, what was your favorite part of the book? Least favorite part? What did you think of the book? Absolutely not. Don’t he dare call Belly a Bridezilla when she was the only one in the relationship taking the wedding seriously when he absolutely did NOTHING ☹️. It’s so messed up how women are insulted when they get stressed over a wedding because they are warranted a moment. The guys in a heterosexual wedding often times in the past didn’t help out as much in the wedding, so I find it insulting that they thought it okay to make a woman feel “crazy” by calling her a bridezilla. She’s not a bridezilla, she’s stressed and tired because the guy’s lazy butt can’t be bothered to help. And also, I sooo dislike the notion that a wedding is “the girl’s day.” If a person genuinely thinks that, honestly run. It’s not the girl’s wedding, it’s your wedding, if the guy isn’t helping you or taking ownership of the day too like he honest want to share your wedding day with you, then run. Absolutely run because you don’t need that energy for the rest of your life if he is not treating planning your wedding like the partnership it should be.I knew I shouldn’t even be at the summer house, because being there, being near her, I would just want what I couldn’t have. It was dangerous. She was the one person I didn’t trust myself around . . . If she knew how much I still cared, it was all over. I wouldn’t be able to walk away again. The first time was hard enough.” (pg. 162-3)