Spoilers for the first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 and the book We’ll Always Have Summer are ahead! Read with caution, and watch the show with an Amazon Prime subscription.
To be blunt, the season of The Summer I Turned Pretty that is now airing on the 2025 TV schedule had an uphill battle ahead. That’s because I was not a fan of how We’ll Always Have Summer handled Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship. However, after watching the first two episodes of Season 3, I’m thrilled to report that the show has fixed my biggest issue with the novel in ways that left my jaw on the floor.
Now, my biggest issue with We’ll Always Have Summer has to do with Jeremiah and Belly getting engaged as teens right after she learned that he’d slept with another woman over spring break. It was a rash and illogical decision that I could never understand or get behind. And that still happens in the book-to-screen adaptation. However, some major changes were made to make all this make way more sense.
Steven and Taylor’s relationship has become a fan-favorite element of the show (and it doesn’t exist in the book), and I don’t know about you, but I always want to root for them. That support continued in Season 3, as it was revealed they’d been on again, off again, and in their latest rekindling, they’re both cheating on their partners. That’s bad. Like really bad. However, I still want them to be together.
So, if I’m hoping they wind up together, it makes me reexamine what Jeremiah did to Belly.
Obviously, it’s terrible. However, what Steven and Taylor are doing is terrible, too. Therefore, I’m over here debating what’s going on even more, because how could I be here for two people cheating to be together and upset with Jeremiah for sleeping with one girl when he and Belly were on a break?
Steven’s Accident Heightens Everyone’s Emotions, Which Helps Justify A Grand Gesture
In the book, Jeremiah spontaneously proposes to Belly right after she learned about spring break. That also happens in the show; however, it took place after Steven’s accident, which is presumably one of the surprises that author and showrunner Jenny Han teased.
He nearly died in a crash that happened right after a huge fight he had with Taylor. As he was recovering, everyone was thinking about how short life can be, and what they wanted after this. So, grand gestures do make a lot of sense in this context.
While I still think Belly and Jeremiah’s engagement is not a good decision, I get their rationale. Their emotions were heightened, and they decided they didn’t want to be apart. Is marriage the right choice? No. However, I can at least understand their logic behind this move.
To Put It Simply, They’re Older And Not Literally Teens
Finally, Belly and Jeremiah have been together for basically all of college when they get engaged in the show. In the book, she was 19 and they had been together for not nearly as long. Teen marriage is never a good decision in my mind, and that, mixed with the fact that they hadn’t been together very long, made me despise their engagement.
In the show, Belly is just finishing her junior year, and Jeremiah is about to graduate (although he learned he’d have to stay one more semester). They’d been together for nearly four years, they’re both in their 20s, and this developmental chapter of their lives was coming up on its final pages.
So, I could get behind their choice to get engaged a bit more.
Overall, all of this is really shocking because they ultimately helped rationalize this choice through some chaotic and life-threatening changes. But, by making it messier, buying into this quick decision became easier.
New episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty drop on Amazon Prime every Wednesday.