As autumn begins to encroach and the leaves to fall, so too does the urge to watch a rom-com become insatiable.
Well, good news. If you’ve not already found one, it’s time to catch up on the internet’s latest obsession, The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Streaming on Prime Video (and clipped to infinity on Instagram and TikTok), it tells the story of Belly (Lola Tung), who, along with her mother, visits their friends at an implausibly chic summer house called Cousins Beach each year. Inevitably, she also ends up falling for the two boys who live there: brothers Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). The colours are slightly hazy, the drama excellent and everything is drenched in summer sunshine.
It’s proved a recipe for success. Season three attracted 25m viewers within its first week on Prime Video, which in turn represents a 40 per cent increase from season two. That figure is in turn three times higher than season one; it seems a lot of us are cottoning onto the fact that this is seriously addictive television.
TSITP is an adaptation of a trilogy of young adult (YA) romance novels by Jenny Han, the American author who already gave Netflix a smash hit with the adaptation of her novel To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and its two sequels. Han is a master of the YA tropes that made massive successes out of books and shows like The Hunger Games and Twilight: namely, long, drawn-out love triangles between a girl and two boys.
But it’s not just teens who are tuning in – in fact, a huge section of its fan base seems to be made up of adult women. And as the finale is drawing in, it’s adult women who are organising watch parties, sharing fan theories and making the case for their favourite brother (all that Team Conrad/ Team Jeremiah chat reminds me forcefully of the Twilight-era Edward/ Jacob wars).
Why has it become such a stealth hit? Perhaps it’s because of the way the show taps right into that sense of being young, confused and trying to find yourself that comes with young adulthood.
“I’ve always approached telling stories about young people as not really different from telling stories about adults,” Han, who is also the showrunner and executive producer, told Elle earlier this year. “I think it’s being respectful of that experience and taking it seriously.”
“If you have a big fight with your best friend and you’re in high school, it can be very earth-shattering. It can really destabilize your whole existence. I don’t feel that’s any less real or important than something happening to an adult. Those feelings are the same, and sometimes they’re even deeper because you’re experiencing it for the first time.”
Clearly, something about that is clicking with the show’s predominantly female audience, perhaps because of how true to life it feels as a result. “The show taps into a hazy, fragmented chapter of my life — girlhood shaped by trauma, neurodivergence, and emotions I never fully understood,” Sara Radin wrote in Elle. “Like the protagonist Belly, I remember the first time a boy noticed me — how thrilling and confusing it felt. I didn’t know what I wanted, only that I wanted to be wanted.”
Much of the show, of course, revolves around Belly’s inner conflict, as she struggles to choose between brothers Jeremiah and Conrad. But, there’s an added allure in the show’s deep exploration of female friendships (particularly Belly’s with her friend Taylor) and its distinctly retro-flavoured aesthetic. After all, the first book came out all the way back in 2009, and though the show is being made 15 or so years after the books came out, that distinctly noughties vibe has remained.
“There is something so nostalgic about it. It feels like a rom com I would have watched in the early 2000s,” says stylist Bee Newham, who has been watching since the show first aired. “As a fashion stylist, I like watching it for the early noughties fashion. The jeans, denim shorts and baby tees the cast wear gives a 00s vibe but also feels modern too.”
It is also, she adds, “really refreshing to watch a TV show that doesn't heavily feature technology or mobile phones. It feels like the time period a lot of millennials grew-up in, which I think is why it is so popular with people my age.”
Plus, TSITP riffs on older shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, Saved by the Bell, and My So-Called Life — shows that many of us grew up watching — with their complicated love triangles and slow-burning relationships.
“[Those shows] laid the emotional blueprint,” Deborah Robbins, a therapist who specializes in relationships and attachment, added to Elle, “which is why we still find ourselves entangled in these dynamics decades later.”
The Summer I Turned Pretty takes some of the best parts of those shows, and updates them to suit the present day. The cast is more diverse, for one; Lola Tung’s heroine Belly is of Asian descent (something Han was adamant about), which would have been unheard of back in the days of The OC.
Plus, everybody is nicer. “Every single character is eager to hold themselves to certain standards of respect and humanity,” Megan Angelo wrote in Vogue. “The boys care if the girls are comfortable. The girls care if the boys are sad. And, of course, not everyone’s a girl or a boy.
“Maybe that’s why I lose myself in it; it feels like an era I’ve been to, minus the bad parts. Maybe, if I’m honest, I’m just a little sad that things weren’t like this when I grew up.”
In an era where the world is uncertain and scary, maybe it’s not a surprise that people are turning to the gentle, low-stakes world of TSITP for a bit of escapism. Or that women, who have grown up to find that the adult world isn’t as full of wonder and potential as they first thought as teens, are returning to a headspace where those things still feel tangible.
One thing’s for sure: as the final three episodes roll around, it’s not too late to jump on the train.
