‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Author Jenny Han Says She Doesn’t Like ‘Too Neat of an Ending’

Want to know how The Summer I Turned Pretty is going to end?

Jenny Han, who wrote the trilogy of books the Prime Video series is based on and serves as showrunner on the series, gave some rare insight into how she likes to wrap up a story during an interview on the Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast.

Han has previously teased that the series’ ending is going to “surprise” fans — even those who’ve read the books — and that it will leave people “devastated and heartbroken,” because that’s how a “successful love triangle” ends.

She likes to keep things “hopeful” when a story ends.

When the host asked Han about the upcoming third season and how she tends to swing when it comes to ending a story, the author said, “I like a hopeful ending.”

She also admitted, though, “I don’t like too neat of an ending, personally.”

“But I really must insist on hope, because if something ends in such a bleak way … That’s what I insist on. And I do think that that is, for me, the only real difference between writing stories for a young audience and for adults — is a hopeful ending,” she continued.

Han feels a “responsibility” to her readers as a young adult author, she explained. “I care about my readers,” she said. “I would never want someone to read my book and then want to cause, like, self-harm or feel, like, deeply depressed after reading that…because they’re still a child. You know, you are responsible for them to some degree, I feel.”

For season 3, as the characters aged, Han approached the story differently.

The author said she thinks differently about a story when it’s being targeted at adults.

“It’s different, though, for adults. Adults can, you know, you can decide for yourself and you have an adult brain. But for young people, I want them to feel hopeful, I want them to feel good about themselves and good about the world around them,” she said. “That’s important to me.”

That line of thinking influenced how she crafted the show’s third and final season, she said, because “the characters are older.”

“They are now adults,” she said of Belly (Lola Tung), Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney) — as well as Steven (Sean Kaufman) and Taylor (Rain Spencer) — given the time jump from season 2 to 3, which finds Belly at the end of her junior year of college. “They are in their twenties.”

In Han’s mind, Belly doesn’t necessarily have to “choose” one brother or the other.

When it comes to the real question at hand — will Belly choose Jeremiah, who she’s currently dating, or Conrad, her first love? — Han played coy as always, but she did offer a unique take.

After the host suggested that Belly has to choose Jeremiah or Conrad, Han interjected. “Well, she doesn’t,” she said. “I don’t think she has to choose one.”

“That is the tragedy of the story, is that no matter what, you’re going to be hurting somebody that you love dearly,” she continued.

Despite the tragedy, Han said fans “will still feel hope” at the end of the series. “I hope so.”

“My biggest thing is I really want people to love it, and I want people to feel satisfied with it,” she added.

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The first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 premiere Wednesday, July 16, on Prime Video, followed by new episodes weekly until Sept. 17.