What happens when the best part of your year just… stops existing?
That's the question sitting at the center of No hay verano sin ti, and it's one Jenny Han refuses to answer neatly. I started this audiobook on a Tuesday evening commute, stuck in traffic with nowhere to go, which turned out to be the perfect accidental metaphor for Belly's emotional state throughout this second installment. She's stuck too — between two boys, between childhood and something harder, between the summer she wanted and the one she's actually living.
The setup shifts everything from the golden nostalgia of the first book. Susannah is sick again. I gave El verano en que me enamoré a strong rating partly because Miras Guillén made that golden first-summer feeling so easy to sink into — which makes the contrast here all the more effective. Conrad has retreated into himself so completely that he's barely recognizable. The beach house that anchored Belly's entire emotional calendar is no longer the sure thing it used to be. Han structures the narrative by alternating between past summers and the present crisis, and while that technique works well on the page, in audio form it demands a particular kind of attention. The transitions aren't always signposted clearly, so if you zone out for thirty seconds during a chapter break, you might find yourself momentarily confused about which timeline you're in.
Irene Miras Guillén narrates with a tone that sits somewhere between matter-of-fact and tender — she doesn't push for tears during the heavy scenes, which I found effective. There's a specific quality to her voice during Belly's more confused, contradictory moments: she slightly drops her pace and lets syllables stretch, as if Belly herself is working through the thought in real time rather than recounting it. It's a subtle choice that prevents the narration from tipping into melodrama. Jauma Quartero handles his portions competently, though his contribution is more limited in scope. Neither narrator transforms the material the way a truly exceptional performance can, but Miras Guillén in particular brings enough emotional specificity to make the listening experience feel personal rather than generic.
The love triangle is the engine here, and your tolerance for it will determine how much you enjoy the ride. Conrad is the kind of brooding, emotionally shut-down boy who communicates mostly through silence and loaded glances — realistic for a teenager processing his mother's illness, but genuinely exhausting to spend time with when you're an adult listener wanting him to just say what he means. Jeremiah is warmer, more present, more obviously good for Belly, and Han writes him with enough dimension that choosing between them feels like an actual dilemma rather than a manufactured one. The road trip sequence, where Belly and Jeremiah set out to find Conrad after he disappears, provides the book's best stretch of momentum and gives the story a sense of urgency it sometimes lacks in the flashback-heavy early chapters.
You should grab this if you connected with the first book and want to see Belly navigate real grief alongside her romantic confusion — and you don't mind her making messy, sometimes maddening decisions along the way. Pick it up too if you watched the Prime Video series and want the interior experience the show can't fully deliver; living inside Belly's contradictions is fundamentally different from watching them play out on screen.
You should skip this if love triangles where neither option communicates like an adult exhaust you rather than engage you. Steer clear if you need consistent forward plot movement — the flashback chapters, while important for emotional context, slow things down noticeably just when the present-day storyline builds steam. And if you're hoping for a standalone experience, know that this ends on a cliffhanger that will send you straight to the third book or leave you frustrated.
What surprised me most was how honestly Han writes teenage grief. Susannah's illness isn't backdrop decoration — it's the force reshaping every relationship in the story. Belly sometimes processes it selfishly, sometimes with startling clarity, and that inconsistency feels true. Teenagers don't grieve in straight lines, and Han doesn't pretend otherwise. There's a scene where Belly is simultaneously furious at Conrad for shutting her out and terrified of what he's going through, and Miras Guillén reads it with exactly the right amount of confused heat.
Marta Becerril's Spanish translation reads naturally, and the narration never has that stiff, translated-from-English quality that can plague audiobooks in other languages. At six hours and forty-one minutes, the runtime is manageable in a few sittings, though the emotional weight makes it feel longer than it is — in a good way.
The ending earns its punch. Han closes on a moment that's both satisfying and painful, the kind that made me want to queue up the final book immediately. I had a similar can't-stop-now pull when I finished Siempre nos quedará el verano, where Miras Guillén again delivers a closing stretch that makes sitting still feel genuinely difficult. That's the mark of a middle chapter doing its job: making the bridge feel essential rather than obligatory. This isn't the lightest or most fun installment in the trilogy, but it's the one that gives the story its emotional spine. The real question here was never which boy Belly would choose — it's whether she can accept that some summers end and don't come back.
