After breezing through seasons one and two of The Summer I Turned Pretty, Amazon Prime’s hit teen drama based on Jenny Han’s trilogy of the same name, I poked around on Instagram to find exactly what I expected: The Summer I Turned Pretty’s fandom had divided itself into two factions—Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah.
It’s a tale as old as Twilight: Two potential paramours, one relatably dorky heroine named Isabel(la), and a love triangle that makes you cringe as often as it makes you swoon. (Did Conrad and Jeremiah really have to be brothers?)
And, as was the case in Twilight, there is only one perfect pairing in the end, no matter how endearing or sympathetic the runner-up love interest may be. In protagonist Belly’s case, her one true match is—spoiler—Conrad. I didn’t need to Google spoilers for the third book in order to reach this conclusion, but I did anyway, and it turns out I was right about this, among other spoilers I won’t mention here…
But even if the show decides to deviate from the books, even if the producers decide to throw a wrench in the plot and give Belly (Lola Tung) and Jeremiah (Noah Casalegno) the picture-perfect ending that Conrad (Christopher Briney) more clearly deserves (or, better yet, dream up a new love interest for Belly whose last name isn’t Fisher), I’d still choose Conrad over Jeremiah any day.
Beyond the fact that Conrad simply has a deeper connection with Belly—their conversations more intimate, more all-consuming compared to her surface-level interactions with Jeremiah—Conrad is the better partner in the long term.
Yes, Jeremiah is cute in that young Jude Law kind of way, and he possesses a disarming boyishness that’s hard not to love. It’s true that Jeremiah is incredibly kind to Belly, and that he always puts on a brave face for her, regardless of the turmoil that’s brewing barely a centimeter beneath the surface of his sun-kissed skin. But Jeremiah puts on the brave face for everyone. It’s simply not sustainable, and Belly will inevitably get swept up as collateral damage.
