It's Not Summer Without You (Summer, #2) by Jenny Han

It's a little bit ridiculous that a YA novel can bring out all the FEELS in me, but Jenny Han, you've done it again. My heart was an emotional mess after reading The Summer I Turned Pretty last year. I immediately read It's Not Summer Without You, (the second book in the Summer trilogy), anxious to keep reading about Belly, Conrad and Jeremiah, but then, like usual, I got distracted and neither read the last book in the series or wrote a review of this one. Then, the other day while I was working, I popped into the library and I saw It's Not Summer Without You on audio* and checked it out. What better way to refresh my memory than by driving around in my car while trying to hold back the tears this book demands of me? Seriously - don't read this book while driving.

This book was all kinds of sad - heart-wrenching, blink-back-the-tears-while-driving sad. And it wasn't just about the relationship between Belly and Conrad and Jeremiah. There was so much more to this book. There's young-love, old-love, the love and bond between life-long best friends, the relationships we have with our parent's at an emotionally-charged young age, and the relationships between the parent's themselves. I love how the summer books don't solely focus on the teens in this book. Susannah and Adam - Jeremiah and Conrad's parent's, and Laurel - Belly and Stephen's mom, weren't just side-line characters: they were pivotal to the entire story, providing that parental presence that I often find is lacking (or unbelievable) in teen stories.

This book also had the addition of some of the chapters being from Jeremiah's point of view. Sigh...sweet, loveable, Jeremiah. He and Conrad couldn't be more different if they tried. This is what makes them both so likeable in their own ways. Jeremiah is fun, goofy and wears his heart on his sleeve. Conrad, on the other hand, is his usual quiet, brooding self. He's as closed of a book as they come.

In this book, the summer's of their childhood spent at Cousins beach are no more. Belly, Stephen, Conrad and Jeremiah are growing up and fast becoming adults themselves. But something happens this summer that brings them together at the beach house to fight for something they all need. And along the way, Conrad and Jeremiah become more transparent to Belly than they have ever been, and she has decide once and for all: follow her heart or hold on to the past? How do you choose between two people you love so completely differently? 

“It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.”

I loved this book just as much as the first and I have promised myself not to waste anytime jumping into the last book in this series, even though I know I'm not ready to say goodbye to Belly, Conrad, Jeremiah OR Cousins beach. 

*This book was fantastic on audio. I really enjoyed the narrator and I found she did an amazing job portraying all the emotions and feelings this book is bursting with.