Who Does Belly End Up With? The Summer I Turned Pretty, Explained
If you have spent any time around fans of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, recognizable from its distinctive title font on posters and opening credits, you already know the central question that drives the whole story: does Belly Conklin end up with Conrad Fisher or his younger brother Jeremiah? It is the kind of love triangle that splits fandoms into camps, and after three books and three television seasons, there is finally a definitive answer.
In both the books and the show, Belly ends up with Conrad. The path to get there looks slightly different across the two versions, and the show adds a few twists that fans of the novels did not see coming. Here is the full breakdown of how Belly’s story wraps up, in the books and on screen, and why the ending lands the way it does.
The Setup: Two Brothers, One Summer House
For anyone who needs a refresher, the story follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin, who spends every summer of her childhood at Cousins Beach with her mother Laurel and her best friend Susannah, along with Susannah’s two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. Belly grows up tagging along after the older boys, and as the years pass, her feelings for both brothers become more complicated.
Conrad is the broody, intense older brother Belly has quietly loved for most of her life. Jeremiah is the warmer, easygoing younger brother who has been her close friend and eventually becomes someone she falls for too. Layered on top of all of this is Susannah’s battle with cancer, which shapes nearly every major decision the characters make.
By the end of the first book and first season, Belly and Conrad share a romantic moment that suggests where things are headed. But that is only the beginning of a much longer journey.
How the Books End
In the novels, Belly’s relationship history with the Fisher brothers is genuinely messy. She and Conrad become a couple after the events of the first book, but things fall apart in the second book, It’s Not Summer Without You, as Susannah’s health declines and Conrad pulls away emotionally rather than letting Belly in. The two break up, and in the aftermath, Belly and Jeremiah grow closer.
The third book, We’ll Always Have Summer, jumps forward in time. Belly and Jeremiah end up in a long-term relationship and even get engaged, with a wedding planned at Cousins Beach. But on the day of the wedding, everything changes. Conrad, who has spent years trying to move on, realizes he cannot let Belly marry his brother without telling her how he truly feels. He shows up and confesses that he still loves her.
What follows is the emotional climax of the entire series. Belly has to decide between the steady, comfortable life she has built with Jeremiah and the deeper, more complicated connection she has always had with Conrad. In the end, she chooses Conrad. The book series closes with Belly and Conrad getting married at Cousins Beach a few years later, when Belly is twenty-three, bringing her story full circle back to the house and the people who shaped her entire life.
So if you only read the books, the answer has been settled for years: Belly ends up with Conrad, and the story closes with their wedding.
How the TV Show Changes Things
When Prime Video adapted the books, creator Jenny Han promised fans that the show would have some surprises, even for people who already knew the books inside and out. The first two seasons largely track the novels, following Belly and Conrad’s early relationship, their breakup tied to Susannah’s illness, and Belly’s growing closeness with Jeremiah.
Season three is where the show begins to diverge more noticeably, while still aiming for the same ultimate destination. The season opens with Belly and Jeremiah together, several years after the events of the earlier seasons, now engaged and planning their wedding at Cousins Beach. Much of the season focuses on wedding preparations, old tensions resurfacing, and the complicated dynamic of Conrad serving as his brother’s best man while still carrying unresolved feelings for Belly.
As in the books, the wedding does not go as planned. Conrad learns about a betrayal on Jeremiah’s part, and the fallout leads to a chain of events where Conrad admits to Belly that his feelings for her never went away. A mix-up involving letters that Susannah wrote to her sons before she passed away adds another layer, eventually leading Jeremiah to confront Belly about her unresolved feelings for Conrad. The wedding falls apart, and Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship ends.
Rather than immediately pairing Belly back up with Conrad, though, the show sends her in a completely different direction. Belly leaves for Paris on a whim, originally intending to join a study abroad program. When the program does not have room for her, she decides to stay anyway, picking up jobs, finishing her degree online, and building an entirely new life and social circle for herself, including a French love interest named Benito.
This is the biggest departure from the books. Instead of resolving the love triangle right after the wedding, the show gives Belly an extended period of independence, far away from both Fisher brothers, where she gets to figure out who she is on her own terms.
The Series Finale: What Actually Happens
The finale, titled “At Last,” picks up about a year after Belly’s wedding to Jeremiah fell apart. She is settled into her life in Paris when Conrad shows up unannounced at her apartment the day before her birthday, on his way to a medical conference in Brussels. He has been writing her letters throughout the year, none of which she responded to, but seeing him in person changes things.
At first, Belly is guarded. She agrees to spend the day showing him around Paris, and Conrad gets to see the life she has built for herself. That evening, she invites him to a small birthday celebration with her new friends, where he learns that her relationship with Benito ended weeks earlier. With that piece of information out in the open, the dynamic between Belly and Conrad shifts.
Later that night, the two of them end up walking along the Seine together, revisiting their shared history, both the good parts and the painful parts. They share a dance, and the moment builds until Belly makes the first move and kisses him. They spend the night together back at her apartment.
The morning after is where the finale gets its most emotional. Conrad tells Belly that their connection means she is tied to him for good, and rather than feeling reassured, Belly panics. She voices a fear she has clearly been carrying for a long time, that Conrad’s feelings for her might be tangled up with what his mother Susannah always wanted for the two of them, rather than being entirely his own. Conrad pushes back, making clear that his feelings have nothing to do with anyone else’s wishes and have remained constant despite everything he has tried to do to move past her.
Belly still is not ready to fully commit, and Conrad, hurt, decides to leave early to catch a train to Brussels. He walks away into the Paris night visibly emotional. But Belly does not let him go. She chases him down and catches up with him at the train station in the early morning, wearing the necklace he gave her years earlier, and tells him that she is choosing him freely, on her own terms, not because of anyone else’s expectations.
The episode closes with the two of them back at the Cousins Beach summer house, with a montage suggesting they spent the following Christmas together in Paris as a couple. The show does not give them a wedding the way the books did, but it leaves no ambiguity about where they end up.
Why the Ending Works for the Show’s Themes
The decision to send Belly to Paris before reuniting her with Conrad was a deliberate choice, and it changes the meaning of the ending in a meaningful way. In the books, Belly chooses Conrad while still deeply enmeshed in the world of Cousins Beach and the Fisher family. In the show, Belly chooses Conrad after spending real time discovering who she is when neither brother is around.
That distinction matters. The central anxiety Belly voices in the finale, that her relationship with Conrad might be more about Susannah’s wishes than their own feelings, is something the show spends an entire season setting up. By giving Belly a life in Paris that has nothing to do with the Fisher family, the show lets her come back to Conrad from a position of independence rather than dependence. When she chooses him at the end, it reads as a choice made freely, which is exactly the point she needed to reach.
This also explains why the show takes a different route than the books to reach the same couple. The destination, Belly and Conrad together, was always the plan, since that has been the emotional throughline since the first book. What changed was the journey Belly needed to take to get there, and the show used Paris to deepen that journey in a way the books’ pacing did not allow.
What Happens to the Other Characters
The finale does not only resolve Belly’s story. Jeremiah, who spends much of the final season processing the end of his engagement, finds his own arc moving forward as well. He reconnects with Denise, a character introduced earlier in the season, and the finale suggests a new romantic connection forming between them, giving Jeremiah his own sense of moving on rather than being left behind.
Belly’s brother Steven and her best friend Taylor, whose on-and-off relationship has been a recurring subplot throughout the series, also reach a resolution. The finale confirms they are together and planning a move to San Francisco tied to a new opportunity for Steven, giving their long-simmering relationship a clear, happy conclusion alongside the main couple’s story.
The Bottom Line
However you watched it, whether through the books years ago or the show’s finale more recently, the answer to who Belly ends up with is Conrad Fisher. The books cement this with a wedding years down the line, while the show ends the relationship’s reunion in Paris and a return to Cousins Beach, with a final note from creator Jenny Han hinting that there could always be more story to tell down the road.
For a series built almost entirely around one question, that question now has a clear and consistent answer across every version of the story. Belly’s journey, from a girl tagging along after two older boys to a young woman who chooses her own path before choosing Conrad, ends the way it always seemed destined to, just with a more complete sense of how she got there.
Key Takeaways
- In both the book series and the TV show, Belly Conklin ends up with Conrad Fisher, not his brother Jeremiah.
- In the books, Belly and Jeremiah get engaged, but Conrad confesses his feelings before the wedding, and the series ends with Belly and Conrad marrying years later at Cousins Beach.
- The TV show follows a similar wedding-day turning point in season three, but Belly’s engagement to Jeremiah ends and she moves to Paris on her own afterward.
- The show’s biggest departure from the books is giving Belly an extended period of independence in Paris before reuniting with Conrad.
- The series finale, “At Last,” has Conrad visit Belly in Paris, leading to a reunion, an emotional conversation about whether his feelings are truly his own, and Belly choosing him freely.
- The finale ends with Belly and Conrad together, shown spending time back at Cousins Beach and in Paris, though the show stops short of giving them a wedding on screen.
- Jeremiah’s arc concludes with a new connection to a character named Denise, while Belly’s brother Steven and her best friend Taylor end up together and plan a move to San Francisco.
- The show’s choice to send Belly to Paris before resolving the triangle reframes her final choice of Conrad as one made from independence rather than dependence on the Fisher family.
- Creator Jenny Han has left the door open for a possible future spinoff, though the core love triangle has been definitively resolved.
