Every summer, Belly and her family head to the Fishers’ beach house in Cousins. Every summer is the same ... until Belly turns sixteen. Relationships will be tested, painful truths will be revealed, and Belly will be forever changed. It’s a summer of first love, first heartbreak and growing up — it's the summer she turns pretty.
Every summer, Belly and her family head to the Fishers’ beach house in Cousins. Every summer is the same ... until Belly turns sixteen. Relationships will be tested, painful truths will be revealed, and Belly will be forever changed. It’s a summer of first love, first heartbreak and growing up — it's the summer she turns pretty.
The series focuses on apolitical themes of adolescence, first love, and family relationships, with its central conflict and resolution rooted in personal emotional growth rather than any explicit political ideology.
The series demonstrates significant diversity through its casting choices, featuring explicit race-swaps for key characters like the protagonist's brother and mother, and introducing LGBTQ+ representation for a main love interest, departing from the source material. While these diverse elements are integrated into the story, the narrative itself focuses on coming-of-age and romance without explicitly critiquing traditional identities.
The show features Jeremiah Fisher, a main character, who is openly bisexual. His identity is portrayed with dignity and complexity, normalized within the narrative, and accepted by his peers and family. The depiction is affirming, presenting his relationships with both genders respectfully and without negative stereotypes or conflict.
The show adapts characters from the book series where Belly, Steven, and Laurel were depicted as white. In the adaptation, these key characters are portrayed by Asian-American actors, constituting race swaps.
The movie does not contain any action or adventure elements.
The show is an adaptation of a novel series. All significant characters in "The Summer I Turned Pretty" maintain the same gender as established in Jenny Han's original books. No canonical characters have undergone a gender change in the on-screen adaptation.
Combines user and critic ratings from four sources