The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2 review: Back to break your heart

A second season can make or break a show. Sometimes, after a stellar first round, the writers don’t know how to recreate the magic and resort to unrealistic miscommunication or dramatic turns. Maybe they shake things up and alter the chemistry of the show. Maybe they run out of story to tell. And maybe they knock it out of the park.

The second season of The Summer I Turned Pretty, which premieres July 14 on Prime Video, is so good that it makes the (already very strong) first season feel like a preamble we had to watch to get to what the show was meant to be. Did you enjoy the fun summer parties and wistful teenage longing set in a gorgeous New England beach house? Great! You’ll still get that, except now it’s intercut with the unfathomable grief of losing someone you love to cancer, and the truth that a genuinely moving love triangle by definition has to end with someone’s devastation.

Though season one finished with Susannah (Rachel Blanchard) promising to enter a trial for treatment of her cancer and everyone feeling hopeful, season two wastes no time in revealing that she is dead. In fact, much of the first episode—set in late spring/early summer of the following year—quickly unravels the happy endings of the finale. Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Belly’s (Lola Tung) first kiss shocks and angers Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), causing them to put any potential relationship on pause. We jump from flashbacks to the end of last summer and throughout the year to the present day, where everyone is grappling with losing Susannah in different ways: Laurel (Jackie Chung) is barely functioning. Steven (Sean Kaufman) is trying to hold everyone together. Belly’s grades, volleyball career, and social life are slipping. In episode one, the boys don’t exist in the present tense—only in Belly’s memories.

As an audience, we feel like Belly: angry and confused at how quickly her world went dark. Stuck in suburban Pennsylvania, Belly can’t believe she’s about to spend her first summer away from the house in Cousins Beach, and the second season doesn’t really come alive until the end of episode two, when we finally get back there. Conrad has discovered their mother’s house has been put up for sale by her half-sister, their Aunt Julia (Kyra Sedgwick), and their cousin Skye (Elsie Fisher), and gradually our whole crew returns to the scene to try to save the place that has the power to bring them together.

“You love this place as much as I do,” Susannah tells Belly in flashback. “If anyone can keep the magic going here, it’s you.” This edict serves as a bit of a thesis for season two: Susannah and Belly and the house are all interconnected, tied together by this “magic.” It makes the romantic tension between her and each of the brothers that much more complicated, because as Oedipal as it sounds, it’s clear that they’re driven by the idea that being with Belly makes them feel a little closer to the mom they lost.

In our review of season one, we admitted that the triangle felt like an unfair fight, with the clear advantage being given to Conrad. In season two, creator Jenny Han & co. shift all the weight to Jeremiah, even putting a finger on the scale by giving him voiceover narration in episode five. As Jeremiah, Casalegno does not squander the opportunities he’s given to win hearts and minds. His chemistry with Lola Tung is off the charts, and he’s as comfortable being an impossibly charming love interest as he is a hurt little kid. Belly makes some questionable decisions as she tries to work out her feelings, but The Summer I Turned Pretty sells her indecisiveness. It’s the rare show that can make you feel as if there isn’t an obvious choice between two guys.

The season isn’t a giant downer, although we’d caution you to be prepared to cry at least once per episode. We’re still dealing with teens in an idyllic seaside town, so there’s ice cream on the boardwalk, lounging by the pool, truth or dare, laser tag, that dance-dance-revolution arcade game, a rager in the house, and a nostalgic dance routine. Steven and Taylor (Rain Spencer)—who both felt a bit unnecessary last season—are given a lot more to do, and their love-to-hate-you dynamic adds the right dose of levity and humor. The show also brings back Cam (David Iacono), Belly’s nice-guy cast-off from season one, and while he’s still a sweetheart, his presence is undeniably shoehorned. And though she does have her own storyline and some affecting flashback scenes with Susannah, we would have liked more Laurel. (You can never have too much Laurel.)

Season one of The Summer I Turned Pretty was escapist and aspirational: Wouldn’t it be nice to be a pretty girl in a pretty house with two pretty boys fighting over you? But it was more than just another teen drama because, in addition to its lived-in, believable characters, it had an undercurrent of fear and potential loss. That fear becomes reality and bursts to the surface in season two, which isn’t letting you escape anywhere. But it somehow holds space for both grief and joy, and that feels even better.

The Summer I Turned Pretty season two premieres July 14 on Prime Video