I have nothing against people getting married young because I have many friends who were married young, I just didn’t like how they were getting engaged to rectify the fact that he cheated. That’s not okay. They should marry out of pure love and not desperation. If anything they should communicate about how to actually move past him cheating and to rebuild that trust and then maybe move in together to see how that dynamic works. Then they should get married. I loved loved loved that. He didn’t give her flowers or chocolate or cheesy teddy bear she didn’t need. He gave her the moon, the stars, and infinity. Get you someone who gives you the mom, the stars, and infinity! Jeremiah was trying to prove that he loved Belly enough to marry her and that their love was stronger than Belly’s love with Conrad because she did choose to marry him. Belly wanted to prove that she also loved Jeremiah more than she loved Conrad and to prove to herself that she was over Conrad and could go through with the wedding to live a happy future with him. But they weren’t marrying each other for the right reasons. But they did love each other and that wasn’t something I ever doubted.

And then there was Jeremiah. When I looked at Jeremiah, I saw past, present, and future. He didn’t just know the girl I used to be. He knew the right-now me, and he loved me anyway. My two great loves. I think I always knew I would be Belly Fisher one day. I just didn’t know it was going to happen like this. Belly found him in the lifeguard stand when Jere returned from the bachelor party. When he told Belly that Jere cheated, I could see how torn he was because he felt happy that he had bad news and that that might end the relationship, but also sad because he didn’t want to hurt Belly. I thought it meant a lot that he even told her rather than protect his brother. When she started to walk away after she felt judged for continuing the wedding even if Jere cheated, and Conrad called out, “I still love you,” (pg. 236), CUE THE SIRENS 😫💚!!!! At the garden dedication event, Conrad arrives late and the narration switches to his point of view. Conrad still loves Belly, though he’s aware he has no right to discuss his feelings with her since he treated her badly when they were together and she’s now in a long-term relationship with his brother. Chapter Five When we broke up in April, it really did come out of nowhere. Yes, we’d had little fights here and there, but you could hardly even call them fights. Like, there was this time Shay was having a party at her godmother’s country house. She invited a ton of people, and she said I could bring Jeremiah, too. We were gonna get dressed up and dance outside all night long. We’d all just crash there for the weekend, Shay said—it would be a blast. I was just happy to be included. I told Jeremiah about it, and he said he had an intramural soccer game but I should go anyway. I said, “Can’t you just miss it? It’s not like it’s a real game.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but I said it, and I meant it. That was our first fight. Not a real fight, not like yelling or anything, but he was mad and so was I. We always hung out with his friends. In a way it made sense. He already had them, and I was still forming mine. It took time to get close to people, and with me at his frat house all the time, the girls on my hall were bonding without me. And there were other things, too, that annoyed me. Things I’d never known about Jeremiah, things I couldn’t have known from only seeing him in the summer at the beach house. Like how obnoxious he was when he smoked weed with his suitemates and they ate pineapple-and- ham pizza and listened to “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and they would laugh for, like, an hour. Also his seasonal allergies. I’d never seen him in the springtime, so I didn’t know he had them. He called me, sneezing like crazy, all stuffed up and pitiful. “Can you come over and hang out with me?” Like I said earlier, I was bothered. I didn’t want to believe that our sweet Jeremiah Fisher would cheat because that seemed like the last thing he would do.Then there was when Jere wanted to go on a last minute Cabo trip with his frat brothers and that he was going without Belly. Belly felt nervous and kind of jealous that Jere was going to Cabo with his frat brothers and the sorority sisters, knowing one of them, Laci Barone, very much had a thing for Jere. I agreed that Jere should have done better to reassure Belly that he could trust him because just saying “If you’re worried, you should come with,” just made it seem like she needed to watch him rather than trust him. But then again, guys at this age don’t’ know what they are saying and don’t think about the implicit mean gin so it’s not like he could have read her mind to know how she felt. I think she should have said how she really felt. But then there were both getting angry at each other because she was nervous about him going and Lacie there but also knowing she didn’t want to go because she was going home to her family. Then she made a dig at his fraternity being stupid and something about an inferiority complex because Jere wasn’t premed like Conrad and just a frat boy. So then Jere was like “Let’s end it now,” which they were both in the heat of the moment and saying things they didn’t mean but always thought. Characters: Each character was flawed in a perfectly imperfect way that made them human and relatable. I loved getting to really know Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah and how much love they had but how much love connects with pain, a pain that they all carried and that brought them closer to each other eventually. I appreciated that he felt like shiz and like a trash human being because he deserved to after he broke Belly’s heart and trust. I also appreciated how he regoconized what he lost when he almost did lose Belly by cheating on her. But DANG, proposing to her to prove that she was the only girl for him and that he would never cheat or break her heart again!?!?!?!?!

I loved how after everything, Belly took a few years to study abroad in Spain. I loved how she really focused on herself and her friendships because gosh gracious, she really did need a break from all the boy drama and heartbreak she endured for the last however many years 😅. I loved how Jenny wrote the epilogue a couple of years later and through Susannah’s wedding letter to Belly. I’m glad we got to read it because I would have rioted if we didn’t. I’m still sad that we didn’t get to read Conrad/Jere’s letter from Susannah 😢. I would have liked to cry a few more tears 🤪! I loved how Belly was twenty-three almost twenty-four and she had graduated. I loved how she did her wedding planning right with Laurel by her side and that the day was sunny. The song was “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. She ended up marrying Conrad after she graduated.Do I still agree with how he treated Belly? No. But I forgive him for it because I now knew what he was going through. Sometimes we become the worst version of ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people. We’re just going through a bad situation. Belly breaks up with Cam midway through season 1 after confessing that she's in love with someone else and, at the end of the season, Jeremiah reveals that he's in love with Belly. Belly begins considering a relationship with Jeremiah. He's set to take her to the debutante ball but, when Jeremiah finds out that his mum Susannah has cancer, Conrad fills in for him.

One of the things I loved most about We’ll Always Have Summer is the fact that we FINALLY got Conrad’s perspective! We got to see into his Mariana Trench mind 😂! It erased what happened and put a band-aid on the hurt and said, let’s forget it and marry each other instead. They really did need Susannah to navigate this absolutely heart-wrenching and complicated situation because she would have known what to say to Jere and Connie to help them through this situation, but they were all hurting and figuring it out together. They were all loving each other through the pain. It’s impossible . . . I love Jere more than anybody. He’s my brother, he’s my family. I hate myself for doing this. But when I see you two together, I hate him too.’ His voice broke. ‘Don’t marry him. Don’t be with him. Be with me.'” (pg. 237-8)

What I also loved was how when Belly was stressing over all the wedding things that two people stepped up for her: Taylor and Conrad. Belly and Jeremiah kiss passionately and often sleep in the same bed. They haven’t had sex in the two years they’ve dated because Belly hasn’t felt that the timing was right. Second, what was this promise Conrad was talking about? I knew it had to come from Susannah though because there is no one else who would have asked him to take care of Jere like a big brother. Conrad tells Belly that Jeremiah cheated on her, and when she replies that she already knows, he openly confesses that he still loves her. Belly is angry that Conrad is telling her the words she always wanted to hear two years too late. He explains that he originally let her go because he felt like he didn’t deserve to love anyone after his mother’s death. Then he removed himself from Belly’s life so Jeremiah could have her, but only did so on the assumption that Jeremiah would treat her well. Conrad asks Belly to cancel her wedding to Jeremiah and be with him instead, but she refuses. The family dynamic between Conrad and Jere was so complex it made me cry for both of them because they were brothers and one of them would be hurt. I mean, family is family and you don’t intentionally hurt family. But Ernie has a point that if she’s the one, then you have to go for it rather than live with that regret.