Synopsis:
If only summer could last forever.
Her whole life, Belly has been in love with the Fishers. Susannah was like a second mother to her, Conrad was her first love, and Jeremiah was her first real boyfriend. Now, after two years, Jeremiah gets down on one knee and offers Belly what she has always wanted… to be Belly Fisher.
As Jeremiah and Belly head back to Cousins Beach to plan their wedding, Conrad comes home to tell Belly he made a mistake when he broke her heart. Now Belly must confront her feelings for Jeremiah and Conrad and face a truth she has possibly always known: She will have to break one of her hearts.
Review:
I’ve really enjoyed this series, but I can’t quite explain why. It’s pretty slow and not much really happens, but I can’t get enough.
I’m going to include spoilers in this review as it is book three and it’s pretty old now, so most people already know what happens.
From day one I have been team Conrad and this book further solidified why. I actually hate Jeremiah and I don’t understand why people prefer him. He cheated on Belly and to try and make up for that he asks her to marry him. What the hell? If that doesn’t scream emotional immaturity I don’t know what does. You’d never catch me accepting a proposal from someone that cheated on me.
What I really don’t understand about this series is why Jeremiah pursues Belly in the first place. She was his brother’s girlfriend, they were literally in love. It doesn’t make sense to me. He has zero respect for how other people feel, even when Belly confronted him about the cheating, he made it about how he thought they weren’t together anymore and not so subtly makes it about how they’ve never had sex despite being together for two years at that point. This comes up a few times during the book and the fact that they’ve been together that long and haven’t slept together proves that it isn’t a mature relationship so they have no business getting married.
Well, it sucks to be you Jeremiah because you don’t get the girl and rightfully so. Conrad is the better brother, end of. This will probably make a lot of people angry, but it’s a bit delusional to think Jeremiah is better. Conrad has his faults but at least he never cheated.
I’m not going to try and defend Belly because she really isn’t a great character either, but I think that’s what makes this series as great as it is. She’s basically a child for most of it, so she makes mistakes and is selfish, but I’d expect nothing less.
We’ll Always Have Summer definitely wasn’t my favourite book in the series, too much Jeremiah for my liking – this review has pretty much become a Jeremiah hate rant. I’ve never wanted Belly to be with him so having to listen to them have cute moments (if you could call them that) was not fun for me.
I will say that the narration, once again, was incredible. Lola does such a great job and I also really liked Chris Briney (Conrad’s) chapters, he didn’t have as many as I’d hoped though. I would have loved more chapters from Conrad’s perspective as he is such a complex character.
Overall, I really enjoyed We’ll Always Have Summer and the only thing that would have made it better for me would have been an epilogue about Belly and Conrad. Over the course of the series you only get a few chapters where they are happy and it would have been the icing on the cake to get an insight into their married life.
I’d highly recommend you check out the audio version of this series as it’s very cosy and feels like a friend telling you a story. The narration and acting are very well done and it’s a great companion to the TV show. The Summer I Turned Pretty audiobooks have now made me want all audiobooks to be narrated by the adaptation’s actors.
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