The Sum­mer I Turned Pretty is the first book in a YA series that by all accounts, seems to be well-loved and incred­i­bly popular.

It’s your typ­i­cal teenage love-triangle set against a pretty back­drop of sea, sun and sand, and not a whole lot else. With these types of books, when we all know what’s going to hap­pen, it’s the char­ac­ters and dia­logue that really make the story.

It’s a pity then, that I so intensely dis­liked Isabel.

Belly mea­sures her life in sum­mers. Every­thing good, every­thing mag­i­cal hap­pens between the months of June and August. Win­ters are sim­ply a time to count the weeks until the next sum­mer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susan­nah, and most impor­tantly, away from Jere­miah and Con­rad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer–they have been her brother fig­ures, her crushes, and every­thing in between. But one sum­mer, one ter­ri­ble and won­der­ful sum­mer, the more every­thing changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

Isabel was, to put it bluntly, a brat. (Other words I came to asso­ciate with her included, but were not lim­ited to: dull, spoilt, petu­lant, will­fully igno­rant, enti­tled lit­tle… madam.)

The moment Con­rad, the elder boy-next-door is described, it’s so very obvi­ous where this is all going, but it will still take three books to get there. And that’s great… if you enjoy the books. Sadly, I really, really didn’t. Con­rad is the brother Isabel (sorry, but I sim­ply refuse to call her Belly) has been obsessed in love with since she was ten. The dark-haired, soul­ful, guitar-playing one. Great at every­thing with­out even try­ing and who, inter­est­ingly, shows no appar­ent inter­est in Isabel for most of the book. His younger brother, Jere­miah doesn’t stand a chance really. Need­less to say, I actu­ally liked him bet­ter, although it’s a shame his char­ac­ter is never really devel­oped beyond the des­ig­nated light­hearted best friend. Per­haps it’s for the best, Jere­miah, when all’s said and done. I sense some painful times ahead for you.

I can totally see why this series is such a hit — what teenage girl doesn’t dream of sud­denly mor­ph­ing into a nat­ural beauty, not to men­tion hav­ing all these hot guys fight­ing over you? But as an older reader, hear­ing over and over and over again how Isabel has ‘blos­somed’ overnight quickly started to grate. It annoyed me that all any­one has to say about Isabel is related to her good looks. It irri­tated me that Isabel doesn’t have any hob­bies, friends, aspi­ra­tions, or life out­side of the two months she spends at Cousin Beach. I dis­liked her atti­tude and her moon­ing over Con­rad. And I absolutely hated how she played one brother of the other.

Thank­fully and rather refresh­ingly, Han doesn’t feel the need to give one brother the typ­i­cal bad-boy per­sona in this love-triangle. The nat­ural choice would be Con­rad, but in real­ity, he and Isabel barely inter­act, we just con­stantly hear about him cour­tesy of you-know-who. It’s almost painful to read really. Isabel acts as though they are in a roman­tic rela­tion­ship when really it’s all in her head. She’s like a pos­ses­sive, slightly crazy, ex-girlfriend. At one point, Con­rad tells her, quite rightly, that there is no way that she, a 15-year-old kid, is leav­ing a party alone in the car of some strange guy that none of them even know. Isabel, in response, promptly throws a tantrum and lit­er­ally screams insults at him and the girl he is talk­ing to at the time. Con­rad doesn’t treat Isabel badly, he treats her like she is: a whiney kid. Because, sadly, that’s all this girl does. Obsess and sulk.

Isabel is, I sup­pose, a stereo­typ­i­cal por­trayal of a teenager. Incred­i­bly young, naive, hor­monal and com­pletely self-absorbed. I imag­ine some read­ers will feel sorry for her, per­haps relate to how she is feel­ing, that first major crush, the pains of grow­ing up etc. I couldn’t. I just didn’t like her. Isabel may well grow up a lot in the next two books, but I don’t have the patience or the incli­na­tion to watch this girl manip­u­late these two guys any fur­ther, going back and forth between them and prob­a­bly for­ever dam­ag­ing their rela­tion­ship as broth­ers in the process. (There was also a third guy, Cam, who was far too nice and intel­li­gent to deserve to be treated the way he was.)

The high­light of the book, for me, was the friend­ship between Susan­nah and Isabel’s mother. I loved how close they were, the way they con­fided their hard­ships and mar­riage prob­lems in one another, how they would get away from life for a lit­tle while every sum­mer to con­nect with them­selves and each other, no men allowed. It was inter­est­ing see­ing their rela­tion­ship through Isabel’s eyes and I felt Han cap­tured their bond very well. I just wish the story had focused on this aspect instead of being all about teenage angst.

I didn’t hate The Sum­mer I Turned Pretty, but I’d be lying if I thought it was good storytelling. It wasn’t until I had fin­ished read­ing, that it occurred to me just how lit­tle there is to this book, and just how much I dis­liked the main char­ac­ter. Do I rec­om­mend it? No. Though I sup­pose it’s a rea­son­able enough choice for a sum­mer beach read, if you’re not the kind to be put off by a lack of real plot (which the con­stant back­wards and for­wards time­line couldn’t dis­guise), under­de­vel­oped or under­used char­ac­ters or a worn-out, cliché, set up. But really, why bother, when there are so much more engag­ing and fun, summer-romance books out there to be read?