The Summer I Turned Pretty Essay

As a little girl, I spent a majority of my summers on the beach with my best friend, her mom, and my mom. It is my happy place, out on a towel with my toes in the sand and a book in my hands. I like to play in the sand and in the water, but not near as much as I like to lay out with something to read. My mother was the librarian at the elementary school that I went to, Mixon Elementary School, so I had a wide variety of books to choose from. She and Ms. Selina would take me and Jean Kendall to the school to pick out a book to read before we left for the beach and we were ready to go. We would spend hours on the beach, all four of us would be reading something. In elementary school, I loved to read Junie B. Jones books. I can remember sitting on the floor of my living room reading Junie B. Jones aloud to my parents. It was so exciting for me to find …show more content…
My very best friend Kailyn and I stayed up an entire night one summer reading it. We both have read The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy numerous times since that first time. Several of our friends have read it as well because of our love for it. The story is about Belly Conklin, a girl who has spent every summer at the beach with her family and Susannah Beck’s family. Her mother’s best friend is Susannah Beck and she was always a second mother to Belly. For as long as she can remember, Belly has loved Conrad Fisher, Susannah’s son, and he has always been like an older brother to her. Throughout the story Belly is very whiny because she wants Conrad to pay attention to her and he does not, which she hates. Eventually she realizes who she is as a person and becomes more confident in herself. At the end of first book Belly finds out that Susannah has breast cancer and both families have to deal with the pain that comes with that. Having to deal with cancer in my own family, I connect with the feelings that Belly experiences at the end of the