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    The Jenny Han Effect: How the YA rock star took charge of her own media empire

    by Jen Yamato, Los Angeles Times Jul 07, 2023 10 minutes
    Jenny Han attends Variety's 2023 Power of Women event at The Grill on April 4, 2023, in New York.

    It was a hot summer day in Cousins. Jenny Han sat inside a beach house, phone in hand, splitting her attention between a million emails and texts, and the torrents of teenage life and love playing out in front of her eyes.

    She watched intently, searching for nuance in the scene before her. "So much of romantic stories is about the looks people give — sneaking looks at each other, being aware of them," she said as seabirds glided in the distance, the occasional motorboat rumbled across the water and characters she dreamed up sprang to life on playback monitors.

    Han wasn't in the fictional Cousins Beach. It wasn't summer. On this balmy October morning, the author-turned-showrunner was on set in Wilmington, North Carolina, bringing the second season of her Prime Video series adaptation "The Summer I Turned Pretty" down the home stretch.

    Last June, the first season of the show debuted at No. 1 on the streaming service; to date the hashtag #thesummeriturnedpretty has drawn 6.8 billion views on TikTok, according to Prime Video. Overnight, the cast became stars on social media and the success of the series sent Han's novels back to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. "Summer" also marked a milestone for Han, who was already considered a rock star in the world of young adult literature — she made the transition from bestselling novelist to successful series creator.

    Han, 42, has been in building mode, starting her own production company, Jenny Kissed Me, and launching multiple streaming franchises from her novels in the last five years: Netflix's "" films, which she executive produced; "," a spinoff series also on Netflix that she created and co-showran alongside Sascha Rothchild; and "Summer," which she also created and co-showruns in its second season with Sarah Kucserka. It returns to Prime Video on July 14.

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