Can we talk about how emotionally manipulative this series is? Because I'm sitting here, a grown adult, getting absolutely wrecked by a teenage love triangle set at a beach house, and I'm not even mad about it. Well, okay, I'm a little mad. But mostly at myself.
It's Not Summer Without You picks up after the golden haze of the first book has burned off. Belly's world has shifted — Susannah is sick again, Conrad has retreated into himself, and the beach house that once felt like a second home now carries the weight of everything falling apart. When Jeremiah calls to say Conrad has vanished, Belly does what any self-respecting protagonist with unresolved feelings would do: she drops everything and heads back to Cousins Beach. What follows is six hours of nostalgia, heartbreak, and the kind of emotional messiness that only teenagers can deliver with such devastating sincerity.
Jenny Han knows exactly what she's doing here. The structure bounces between present-day chaos and memories of better summers, and it works because the contrast is the whole point. The happiness you felt reading the first book becomes the source of the ache in this one. It's effective storytelling, even when the pacing stumbles. And it does stumble — the middle stretches in places, and the ending arrives so abruptly that it feels like someone yanked the tablecloth off a set dinner table. Multiple listeners have flagged this, and they're right. The wrap-up feels rushed, almost dismissive after the emotional buildup that precedes it.
Now, the dual narration. Lola Tung returns as Belly and she's exactly what you want — warm, a little breathless, carrying that perfect mix of determination and vulnerability. Her voice has this quality that makes Belly's inner monologue feel like a confession you're overhearing. Gavin Casalegno steps in for Jeremiah's chapters, and this is where opinions split hard. Both narrators play their respective characters in the Amazon Prime adaptation, which gives their performances an authenticity that's hard to replicate with random voice actors. You're hearing Belly and Jeremiah as the people who literally embody them on screen.
Gavin's sections, though, don't carry the same emotional weight as Lola's. It's not that he's bad — he's perfectly competent — but Jeremiah's POV chapters feel more like a structural addition than a narrative necessity. You get some insight into his headspace, sure, but the story is fundamentally Belly's, and every time we shift away from her, there's a slight loss of momentum. Some listeners called his addition "a stroke of genius." Others said it didn't add much. I land somewhere in between — it's a nice touch that doesn't quite justify itself.
The angst factor is real, and your tolerance for it will determine a lot about your experience. This is a book where characters make frustrating decisions driven by big feelings and limited life experience, which is exactly how teenagers operate. If you can sit with that and remember what it felt like to be seventeen and convinced your heart was literally breaking, you'll find a lot to connect with here. If teenage romantic drama makes you want to throw your earbuds into the ocean, this isn't your book and never was.
Compared to The Summer I Turned Pretty, this sequel trades the dreamy, sun-soaked discovery of first love for something darker and more uncertain. It's a better book in some ways — more stakes, more complexity — but it loses some of the effortless charm that made the first installment so addictive. Where book one was a warm breeze, book two is the storm rolling in. That shift is intentional and mostly works, but it does mean your listening experience will feel heavier.
The production is clean and straightforward — no music, no sound effects, just two narrators trading chapters. At just over six hours, it's a quick listen, which works in its favor given the emotional intensity. You won't feel bogged down, even during the slower stretches. I found it worked best during a quiet evening listen where I could actually pay attention to the emotional beats rather than trying to process teenage heartbreak while navigating traffic.
Jenny Han has built something genuine with this series. It's not trying to be more than what it is — a story about young love, loss, and the way summer can hold both your best and worst memories. The audiobook format, powered by Lola Tung's emotionally honest performance, elevates the material beyond what you might expect from a YA romance sequel. It made me cry. It made me laugh. It made me deeply annoyed at Conrad, which I'm pretty sure is the intended response. That particular experience — being completely at the mercy of a story's emotional architecture and knowing it, even resenting it a little — is something I also felt with Queen's Gambit, where the character work digs under your skin whether you invited it to or not.
The abrupt ending knocks it down a notch, and Gavin's narration, while solid, doesn't quite match Lola's emotional range. But when this book hits, it hits hard enough to leave a mark.
