The Summer I Turned Pretty Is Better at Selling Summer Than Romance
Conrad and Jeremiah can change their minds every few episodes. Cousins Beach is meant to stay exactly where Belly left it.
That promise is there from the beginning. Belly has spent every summer at Susannah's house since she was a baby, and she counts down until she can return. The first episode gives us the familiar drive, Jeremiah's hug, the boys throwing Belly into the pool, her old room, dinner with both families and movie night with Laurel and Susannah.
Before the romance properly begins, the show has already made arrival feel like a ritual.
The love triangle creates the weekly argument, and it deserves the attention it gets. Cousins explains why both relationships feel so important in the first place. Belly is choosing between two people who are tied to every summer she remembers.
Most summer stories sell one unusually good vacation. The Summer I Turned Pretty sells access to the same summer every year. That is a much bigger fantasy.
Cousins comes with a bedroom that still holds Belly's childhood things, friends who expect her arrival and adults who have known her for years. There are movie nights, beach runs, boardwalk competitions, Fourth of July plans and an annual photograph on the dock.
Belly is technically visiting the Fishers, but the house never treats her like a guest. Her absence feels temporary.
Susannah creates that feeling. She fills the house with food and fresh flowers, plans the celebrations, keeps the traditions going and speaks about future summers as if they have already been booked.
Even the design was built around her. The production team used cedar shingles and hydrangeas for the East Coast look, while the interiors were filled with details connected to Susannah's love of gardening. The crew bought so many hydrangeas that the production designer joked they had cleared out the state. The house was designed to feel specifically like Susannah's home.
Part of the appeal is that everyone already knows what comes next there.
The pool means a Belly flop. The dock means the annual picture. The living room means Laurel and Susannah watching an old film together. Morning can mean muffins before the rest of the house wakes up.
A beautiful room gives you something to save on Pinterest. A room connected to a tradition gives you a life to imagine.
Season two proves how much of the show's emotional power lives inside that idea.
Susannah is gone, the house may be sold, and the usual summer cannot simply begin again. When the group returns from the boardwalk and finds the house empty, the shock is larger than missing furniture. Their shared future has suddenly been packed away.
The episode places a day of repeated childhood games directly before the discovery of the emptied house. The sale would remove the place that told them they could always come back.
So the characters begin rebuilding summer themselves. They repeat the boardwalk competition, throw a party, study together through the night, take the annual photograph and finish with another Belly flop.
Susannah used to organise the rituals for them. Without her, repeating them becomes the group's way of keeping Cousins familiar.
The clothes, food and music make that world easy to carry outside the screen.
Belly's swimsuits and simple summer dresses look like clothes that can survive an actual day. The wardrobes were shaped around each character and the books, so everyone dresses for a distinct life instead of one shared trend.
Jenny Han has said she listened to Taylor Swift while writing the books, and longtime readers asked for that music if the story ever reached the screen. Those songs were part of the show's emotional plan from the start.
Now a familiar track can make an ordinary car ride or walk near the beach feel briefly like Cousins. The show makes summer seem recoverable through small things: a playlist, a muffin run, a white dress, blue bedding, a late swim.
And this is where the romance benefits most.
Conrad feels connected to Belly's oldest idea of summer. Jeremiah feels connected to its ease and fun. Their history with her is not explained only through dialogue. It sits in the house, the pool, the beach path and every tradition they have repeated together.
Move the same triangle to an anonymous suburb and it would still be dramatic. It would lose much of its sense of fate.
Even an episode in which neither brother flirted with Belly could still make Cousins look desirable. The reverse is harder.
Without the house, the annual return and Susannah's belief that summer could hold everyone together, the romance loses part of the history that makes every choice feel enormous.
The annual photograph sums up why Cousins works so well. Everyone changes from one summer to the next, but the dock stays in the same place and there is always room for another version of the group.
Conrad and Jeremiah make you choose. Cousins is what makes you want to come back after the choice is over.