For the past 10 weeks, The Summer I Turned Pretty has had me, like so many others , in a chokehold. I watch it alone, I host viewing parties, and I’ve even synced episodes with a friend in London—her midnight, my evening—our texts ricocheting in real time. By Thursday, I’m doomscrolling fan edits set to Taylor Swift. By Friday, I’ve pulled the sun-bleached paperbacks off my shelf, revisiting their dog-eared pages. By the weekend, the show has infiltrated my conversations and Spotify algorithm.

At 26, the show has gripped me with the same intensity that Harry Potter , One Direction, and The Vampire Diaries once did. But it’s different now. The obsession isn’t about escape; it’s about return—remembering who I was when I first read Jenny Han’s trilogy, and who I became after.

I was

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