Why Jenny Han Is The Yash Raj Of Hollywood

In her twenties, Jenny Han was in the genteel business of book-publishing, churning out one Young Adult (YA) novel after another, while working as a librarian. Now in her mid-forties, after a series of streaming wins, she has built a romance empire, with millions of fans all over the world. The Summer I Turned Pretty just wrapped up its third and final season on Amazon Prime this September, drawing in 25 million viewers in its first week, and is a pop culture sensation, no less. The story of Belly Conklin (Lola Tung), who becomes entangled in a love triangle with two brothers over the course of a summer in their families’ shared beach house, had everyone’s heart aflutter. TSITP is more than a show; it’s a global phenomenon.

Imagine dividing entire countries/continents into Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah for who you think Belly should end up with. Jenny Han made you feel the flutter of young love, the scald of heartbreak, and yet kept you coming back for more. If that’s not acing the romance genre, what is?

Han’s penchant for emotionally charged love triangles beats even Yash Chopra’s. She has built a fervent fan base through her sheer ability to capture the murmur of an emerging crush, the euphoria of falling in love and the sting of heartbreak. If this is not Bollywood-coded, what is?

The area where she trumps Bollywood is that her audience is as diverse as her characters—half millennial, half Gen Z and lower, and yet, all of them picking a side for Belly. Viewers are totally split, but whichever team they are, they’re really die-hard.

Prior to this, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018-2021), a Netflix trilogy (based on her novels from a decade ago) also had the world buzzing about young people stuck in a love triangle and private love letters gone rogue—starring Lana Condor and Noah Centineo, it turned into an international smash franchise, including three feature films and a spin-off television series.

When the series came along, it was touted as one of the first mainstream rom-coms to feature a Eurasian lead; it was an instant mega-hit. To Han, it was historic and personal—for the first time, there was actual representation for Asian-Americans.

It’s interesting to note that early in Han’s career she was pressured to write Belly, the protagonist from the Summer series, as a white character. But long after, when she had offers to make the book into a series, she was able to fight to ensure the main character was Eurasian, as she had always envisioned. She also stood her ground when film studios pressured her to make the To All the Boys protagonist Lara Jean, a white character. And by standing her ground, she was able to foster much-needed representation. The rest, as they say, is history. Han was soon a cultural figure. She shifted the focus from picture-perfect love stories to something much more real: Love that’s complicated, slow burn, and sometimes heartbreaking.

Han said in an interview that she’s developed a three-question metric to help her make big decisions, prioritise her time and keep her life in balance. “I would ask myself three questions: Is it fun? Is it easy? Is it really worth it? You’ll be amazed at how easily you can work things out if you ask those questions,” she said in a recent interview.

While teenage love is central to all her stories, her production company Jenny Kissed Me bears the tagline, “Coming of age, at any age”. She makes it a point to include multigenerational relationships in her storytelling and pivotal transitions in adulthood: death, divorce, empty nests and more. Although a millennial, she holds a nostalgia for her own teen-hood, while projecting hopes and ideals for her next generation of viewers—the ones even younger than GenZ. She is like the big sister we never had: she is wise, yet cool, and her choice in music and movies is not ‘sus’; plus she has that aura of “it’s all going to be okay”. In a sense, Han is creating the teen-hood she never had, and in doing so, she is connecting us to an aspirational teen-hood. She offers that warm, fuzzy summer feeling that anything is possible really, that “the girl next door” could be anyone and you kind of know she has your back.

Although her focus is YA love stories, her shows are sparking inter-generational conversations about romance, and that is something. Going by what my Denver-based friend Liz Matney, author of Home in Exile (2025) has to say, the boundaries for viewership are blurred. She says, “What began as casual viewing has turned into meaningful conversations between my 15 year-old daughter and me: about growing up, first love, Asian-American culture, and the complexities of relationships. I also admire how Jenny Han brings Korean American culture to life with such warmth and authenticity.”

“I’ve heard she’s a fan of Indian films and love stories, which makes sense because there seems to be a shared tenderness in both Korean and Indian storytelling. Both Korean and Indian cultures share a sense of emotional depth and familial connection that feels timeless. These types of multicultural stories were almost unheard of back when I was growing up. There’s something so real and warm about the way she captures young love, which she depicts as hopeful, awkward, often confused, and utterly human,” she adds.

27 year-old Aboli Maharwade, who worked with Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine As Light (2024) as a BTS photographer, is a fan too. “I think Jenny Han’s stories connect with Gen Z because she captures love the way it actually feels—confusing, imperfect, but so real. Her writing doesn’t just show romance, it shows longing, timing, and all the little in between moments that make falling in love both beautiful and painful,” she says.

In PS: I Still Love You (2015), the protagonist Lara Jean Covey shares: “There’s a Korean word my grandma taught me. It’s called jung. It’s the connection between two people that can’t be severed, even when love turns to hate. You still have those old feelings for them; you can’t ever completely shake them loose of you; you will always have tenderness in your heart for them.” There is no other word that comes close to what you feel about Jenny Han’s work. It’s a feeling that sticks, even after time passes.