It's Not Summer Without You Sparknotes

The book It's Not Summer Without You written by Jenny Hann is about a teenage girl named Isabel Conklin, also known as Belly. In the book, Belly lives in a small town but every year since she was little she has been going to the beach house at Cousins Beach with her mother and her brother Steven. There Susannah, Belly’s mother's best friend, owns the beach house. She also visits in the summer with her boys Jeremiah and Conrad. Belly has always loved Conrad, she’s loved him for as long as she can remember. But her feelings about him change throughout the books in the trilogy. Susannah throughout the first book is battling cancer, but in the second book, It's Not Summer Without You, she sadly passes away. Her death leaves a mark on her sons and

Belly is still struggling over the death of Susannah. “When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone” (Hann 2). Belly had always been close to Susannah. She was like a second mother to her so when she passed away Belly struggled with processing the death. Belly tries to distance herself from the death and act as if it didn’t happen, but it doesn’t work. Belly displays to the reader in the quote the feelings of grief that she is going through. Jenny Hann is displaying to the readers here how the main character of the book battles through her grief, which shows how she talks about life and

They are left to search for him. Belly had told her mother that she would be staying and her best friend’s house, Taylor, but then went with Jeremiah to find Conrad. They first started their search at his college in Boston, where they didn’t find him. They then go to the Beach house in Cousins where they find him. While staying at the beach house, trying to get Conrad to go back to school, a real estate agent comes to the house to talk about selling the house. Conrad seems to get upset about this and tells her they are not selling the house. After the real estate agent leaves and Conrad storms off, Belly seems to realize the distraught that Conrad was going through. “He didn’t run away for the sake of running away. He came to save the house” (Hann 146). It was always hard for others to understand Conrad’s emotions, but it is clear that Conrad was deeply distraught. And was trying to save the house because it was his mother’s. Hann, by showing Conrad’s distraught, shows how she talks about life and living and the effects that it is causing her