Best friends forever! Laurel Park (Jackie Chung) refers to her late best friend, Susannah Fisher (Rachel Blanchard) as “Beck” throughout The Summer I Turned Pretty series, especially when discussing her memoir, It’s Not Summer Without You, throughout the show’s second season.
However, the nickname, “Beck” actually came from The Summer I Turned Pretty book series, written by Jenny Han.
Keep reading to find out why Laurel calls Susannah “Beck” in the books and TV series.
Why Does Laurel Call Susannah ‘Beck’ in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’?
It’s revealed in The Summer I Turned Pretty book series that Laurel calls her longtime friend “Beck” because that is Susannah’s maiden name. She changes her last name to Fisher when marrying Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah’s (Gavin Casalegno) father.
However, Laurel continued to call Susannah by her former last name.
In terms of her character, Jackie explained that Laurel’s story is much more fleshed out in the show compared to the original book series.
“Both seasons have been different from the book because I feel like my character has been expanded so much in the series,” the actress explained to E! News in July 2023. “So there isn’t much of the career, life, romance in the books that I get to experience.”
What Is ‘It’s Not Summer Without You’ About?
In real life, the second The Summer I Turned Pretty book is titled It’s Not Summer Without You. The Prime Video show’s second season follows that novel pretty closely.
“The second book takes place over only a few days. And then it has a bunch of flashbacks,” Jenny explained to Distractify in June 2022 of the changes. “And so we are sort of approaching the second season with that same kind of energy where you can see, I think, some of what happened in the intervening months. I’ll say that without spoiling, I mean, really, just Google the book. Read the book, and maybe you’ll have a good idea about what’s going to happen, but it won’t be the exact, but it’s inevitable, though.”
Instead of changing the name of the show completely, the author and showrunner shared a subtle nod to the second book by making it the title of Laurel’s memoir. So, in The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2, the book It’s Not Summer Without You is about Laurel experiencing all her summers at Cousins Beach with Susannah before her death.
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