I was folding laundry on a rainy Saturday afternoon when I started this one, and honestly, that turned out to be the perfect setting — domestic, a little melancholy, the kind of gray day where you want to feel something but not think too hard.
Ohne dich kein Sommer picks up where Der Sommer, als ich schön wurde left off, and if you've been through that first book, you know the emotional stakes have been quietly building. Belly finally got Conrad, the boy she's wanted for what feels like forever, and then life does what life does — it takes something precious away. Susannah's death casts a long shadow over everything, and the book is really about how grief reshapes relationships, sometimes beyond recognition.
What struck me compared to the first installment is how much darker the emotional register gets here. Der Sommer, als ich schön wurde had that hazy, nostalgic summer glow — first crushes, sun-warmed skin, the ache of growing up. This sequel trades that warmth for something colder and more complicated. Conrad pulls away from Belly, not because he doesn't care, but because grief has swallowed him whole. Belly, at sixteen, doesn't have the emotional vocabulary to understand that yet. She reads his distance as rejection. It's frustrating to watch, but it's also painfully realistic. Jenny Han has always been good at capturing the way teenagers experience emotions at full volume without the tools to process them.
Der Sommer, als ich schön wurde is where that quality first won me over, and it's part of why I was so ready to follow Belly into the harder chapters.The love triangle between Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah intensifies here, and your patience for that dynamic will determine how much you enjoy the ride. If you've read Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, you know she has a gift for making romantic indecision feel genuine rather than manipulative. I reviewed the audiobook version of A todos los chicos de los que me enamoré a while back and kept thinking about it while listening to this one — Han really does have that rare ability to make you root for someone even when they're making decisions that would drive you absolutely crazy. That same skill is on display here — you can understand why Belly is torn, even when you want to grab her by the shoulders. But I'll be honest: there were stretches in the middle where the internal back-and-forth between the brothers felt like it was circling the same ground. The emotional weight is real because Susannah's death and the potential loss of the beach house raise the stakes beyond just who-does-she-like, but the triangle still occasionally spins its wheels.
The beach house subplot is actually one of the strongest threads in the book. The threat of losing this place that holds so many memories — Susannah's memories, childhood memories, the physical container for everything these characters have shared — gives the story a concrete emotional anchor. It's not just about teenage romance; it's about holding onto the past when everything is changing. That landed harder than I expected, and the scenes where the kids rally together to save the house gave the story a sense of purpose that the romance alone couldn't carry.
Leonie Landa narrates the German edition, and she makes some smart choices with Belly's voice. There's a slightly breathless quality to how she delivers Belly's internal monologue — the words come in quick bursts during anxious moments, then slow down and get softer when Belly is remembering Susannah or sitting with her own sadness. It's a small thing, but it captures the way a sixteen-year-old's emotional state swings between urgency and quiet devastation. Where Landa is less distinctive is in differentiating Conrad from Jeremiah vocally — both brothers land in a similar register, and in a book where the central tension is choosing between them, I wished she'd drawn a sharper line between the two. It's a minor gripe, though. She carries the story without ever pulling you out of it.
At six hours and forty-one minutes, this is a quick listen. I got through it in an afternoon and part of an evening. The pacing reflects that brevity — it moves briskly, though those middle stretches where Belly is agonizing over her feelings slow things down. Compared to the first book, which had more of a lazy summer rhythm, this one has a slight urgency driven by the dual crises of the failing relationship and the potential sale of the house.
Where this sits relative to the first book is pretty clear to me: Der Sommer, als ich schön wurde is the stronger audiobook experience because that initial discovery of Cousins Beach and the whole cast of characters is so vivid. This sequel relies on your existing investment, which means it rewards fans but wouldn't work as a standalone — don't start here. It's the middle chapter of a trilogy, with all the strengths and limitations that implies. Things get worse before they can get better, and the real payoff is still ahead.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
If you already care about Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah and don't mind grief slowing down the romance, you'll want this in your queue. If love triangles exhaust you or you need stories that stand on their own, this isn't going to convert you. For a rainy afternoon or a long commute, it fits the bill — the kind of listen that makes you feel sixteen again for a few hours, which is sometimes exactly enough.
