Audiobook Review | It’s Not Summer Without You

Diving into the next book in this series.

It’s Not Summer Without You
Jenny Han

Belly finds out what comes after falling in love in this follow-up to The Summer I Turned Pretty from the New York Times bestselling author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Jenny Han.

Can summer be truly summer without Cousins Beach?

It used to be that Belly counted the days until summer, until she was back at Cousins Beach with Conrad and Jeremiah. But not this year. Not after Susannah got sick again and Conrad stopped caring. Everything that was right and good has fallen apart, leaving Belly wishing summer would never come.

But when Jeremiah calls saying Conrad has disappeared, Belly knows what she must do to make things right again. And it can only happen back at the beach house, the three of them together, the way things used to be. If this summer really and truly is the last summer, it should end the way it started—at Cousins Beach.

Bookshop.org | Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon

I wasn’t sure if I would pick this up after reading the last book because it wasn’t quite what I expected. In the end, I decided that I was curious enough to see what happened and how that compared to what I already knew about the story from the TV series.

Surprisingly I found Belly a bit easier to get on with in this story, she is still very self-centred in some respects but not quite as bad. I felt a lot more forgiving of it in this book as she was going through heartbreak, and because she is trying her best to help Conrad and Jeremiah through a difficult time.

This time we don’t just get to hear from Belly we also get a few chapters from Jeremiah’s perspective, this is to introduce his feelings for Belly. Whilst it was nice to get to listen to Gavin Casalegno who joined Lola Tung in narrating the audiobook, I didn’t feel like it added a lot to the story at this juncture.

I am at the same time glad it was Jeremiah’s perspective and not Conrad’s because he was not great in this story. He definitely went straight past angsty bad boy to just being an arse. I am also a bit disappointed that we didn’t get Conrad’s perspective because it could have added some extra depth to the story and situation.

In the same vein as book one I enjoyed listening to this story, it was some easy escapism and if I get the chance I will try and read the next book in the series.