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The most bingeworthy teen dramas of the moment are the ones that force a girl to choose between two brothers. Prime Video has “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” a story about two brothers and the girl they’re both in love with, while Netflix’s offering is “My Life with the Walter Boys,” following Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), an orphaned teen who moves to Colorado to live with her late mother’s best friend and her family. Both series are based on books, which gives a bit of insight to which guy the ladies end up with. For Jackie, it’s Cole (Noah LaLonde), the brooding former football player.
The Netflix series takes several liberties with its adaptation, including where Jackie’s romance is concerned. The show creates a dynamic love triangle between Jackie, Cole, and Alex (Ashby Gentry), with Jackie believing Alex to be the “safe” option and Cole as the one who makes her lose control. While her feelings aren’t so different in the source material, the love triangle comes to an end with the first book, allowing Jackie and Cole to explore what’s between them in the second novel.
Jackie’s summer in New York isn’t a surprise
While the show depicts Jackie as fleeing to New York without telling anyone, leaving Alex, Cole, and the rest of the family to wonder if she’ll come back or what she thought of them, in the book they know she’s going. The patriarch is the one driving her and Danny to the airport after a big goodbye party, which includes Katherine revealing a mural she painted on the side of the barn. It shows all the family, including Jackie, reinforcing that Colorado is her new home.
Cole catches up with them, forcing his father to pull over so that he and Jackie can have a moment. He wasn’t there when she said goodbye to the rest of the family, and he regrets that. The two kiss in the rain, and while they aren’t officially together at that moment, it shows where the story is headed with the second book. She and Cole are the couple the narrative is going to focus on when she returns to Colorado — not her and Alex.
Jackie and Cole work things out
When the second book, “My Return to the Walter Boys,” opens, Jackie is unambiguously into Cole. She and Alex have a very clean breakup before she leaves, and rather than continuing the love triangle between them, Alex is with someone else. They are on good terms as friends, leaving everything open for Jackie to explore how she feels about Cole.
However, Jackie is her own worst enemy during her second year in Colorado. She’s concerned that, should she and Cole not work out, the Walters will choose him over her, leaving her without a family for the second time in her life. She acknowledges that they’d be right in her eyes to choose Cole, since they’re biologically related to him, but it doesn’t stop her from being a bit hot and cold with Cole, which frustrates him as he tries to give her what she needs.
By the end of the book, she and Cole work through this miscommunication. Jackie shares a part of her life from New York with just him, and the two discuss how, even if they aren’t together forever, it won’t change how the family feels about her. It puts them in the perfect place to finally be together, with no pesky brothers or uncertainty in their way.