The Summer I Turned Pretty

Think back to the last time you packed for a vacation. The familiar, annual trip—the one where you can almost feel the sun on your skin before you've even locked the front door. You grab the same worn-out sweatshirt, the book you always mean to finish, the specific brand of snacks you only eat in that one place. It’s a ritual. Each item is a key, unlocking a specific version of yourself that only exists in that time and place. This annual transformation is a quiet magic we all perform, stepping out of our everyday lives and into a slightly different skin, hoping that this time, this year, things will finally be different. We pack not just clothes, but expectations.

For sixteen-year-old Belly Conklin, this ritual is everything. Every June, she packs her bags for Cousins Beach, the place where she sheds her ordinary, school-year self and becomes the girl she’s meant to be. It's the one constant in her life, a place suspended in time with two constants of its own: the brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. For years, she's been the invisible little sister, the tagalong. But this year feels different. The air is charged with a new energy, a shift she can feel in the way the boys look at her. It’s the summer she’s been waiting for, the summer where the lines between friendship, family, and first love begin to blur into something thrilling and terrifying. This is the summer she turns pretty.

This feeling—the potent mix of nostalgia, anticipation, and the bittersweet ache of growing up—is the heartbeat of Jenny Han's work. As a Korean-American author writing for young adults, Han noticed a gap in the stories she loved. She wanted to capture that universal feeling of a transformative summer, but center it on a protagonist who looked like her, without making her ethnicity the central conflict. Han wrote the book she wanted to read as a teenager, creating a world so vivid and emotionally resonant that it feels like a memory of a summer you never actually had. She built Cousins Beach as an emotional landscape where any reader could explore the messy, beautiful, and unforgettable moments of first love and self-discovery.

Module 1: The Power of Place and Ritual in Forging Identity

Our environment shapes us more than we realize. The right place can feel like a sanctuary, a separate world where we can become the truest version of ourselves. In the book, this place is the summer house at Cousins Beach. For the protagonist, Belly, it’s everything. She says her whole life is measured in summers. The rest of the year is just waiting. This illustrates a powerful concept: Your environment can either constrain or liberate your identity. For Belly, the summer house is liberation. It's where she feels seen, where she grows, and where her most important memories are made. The sensory details of arriving—the salty air, the familiar radio station—signal a return to her authentic self.

This connection isn't just emotional; it's reinforced through tradition. And here's the thing: Shared rituals create a powerful sense of belonging and mark the passage of time. The first-night dinner is always a spicy bouillabaisse. This ritual signals the official start of "summer." It reunites the two families and solidifies their bond. Similarly, Belly’s secret nighttime swims are a personal ritual. They are a cherished, private part of her summer identity, a routine that brings her comfort and clarity. These rituals, both communal and personal, anchor her to the house and to the person she becomes there. They are the infrastructure of her world.

But this sacred space also defines who belongs and who doesn't. Belly feels a deep, possessive connection to the house. It's a world built for her, her brother, the Fisher boys, and their mothers. This leads to a crucial insight about creating strong team or family cultures. Defining an "in-group" is often achieved by implicitly defining an "out-group." Belly observes that fathers "didn’t belong in the summer house." They were visitors, not members. This exclusion reinforces the house as a unique, matriarchal sanctuary. For leaders or founders, this is a reminder that culture is built on a shared understanding of who and what fits within the world you’ve built. The house is a living container of memory, and its exclusivity is part of what makes it so powerful.