There is a plethora of recent YA television series across streamers and networks, including “The Summer I Turned Pretty, “Off Campus,” “Cruel Intentions,” and “Every Year After” (which all happen to be Prime Video series). However, these shows tend to zero in on romance, focusing almost solely on those initial feelings of love and sexual awakening. With the new drama “Sterling Point” —  executive produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, and also on Prime Video — creator Megan Park (“My Old Ass”) offers something wholly unique and wistfully authentic to the genre. A series about grief, self-discovery and being brave enough to face the past, “Sterling Point” is one of the most authentic YA shows in years.​“Sterling Point” opens in a posh Manhattan home, where 17-year-old Annie Jacobson (a sensational Ella Rubin) is awakened as the automatic drapes in her room slide open. After removing her silk eye mask and turning off her sound machine, she embarks on an extensive hygiene and skincare routine that rivals the bougiest influencer’s. Unfortunately, Annie’s painstaking facial sculpting does nothing to calm her nerves. It’s the summer before her senior year of high school, and she’s awaiting news of acceptance to a prestigious summer program at the Wharton School. Though her father, Steven (Jay Duplass), and twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), are sympathetic when Annie receives her rejection email, they urge her to try to shed some of her Type-A tendencies and enjoy her final carefree summer of adolescence.​The universe, of course, has other plans. A lawyer turns up at the Jacobson home to inform the twins and their father (who, along with their late mother, adopted them at birth) that their mother’s father, Gordon, has just died, leaving them the beneficiaries of a trust and a property called Sterling Point in Muskoka, Canada. Connor reacts to the news with indifference, but Annie finds herself intrigued, especially after she notices her father’s discomfort and skittishness around mentions of their estranged grandfather. After discovering years’ worth of letters and cards hidden in her dad’s safe and reading the letter Gordon left for her, Annie slips away to Canada to visit Sterling Point and discover exactly who her mom was.​Sterling Point isn’t at all what Annie expects when she arrives. The island Gordon owned is absolutely stunning. However, she’s not prepared for all of the secrets she begins to encounter. Setting up shop in Gordon’s cottage along the lake, she makes friends with the lively Oona (Bo Bragason), her 12-year-old sister Maple (Mabel Strachan), Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), whose father Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) owns the marina, Sully, whose moms own the town’s grocer and cafe, and Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), an old friend from New York City. Even more shocking is Annie’s encounter with Ramona(Amélie Hoeferle), the stoic and standoffish redhead who looks exactly like Annie’s dead mom and who insists Gordon was also her grandfather.​Though Ramona is extremely standoffish at first, she and Annie begin to compare notes regarding their respective lives and what they will do with Gordon’s beloved home. However, their tenuous bond begins to crack when Connor arrives unexpectedly touting his own ideas about Sterling Point, and the trio realizes there are even more secrets about their lives to uncover.​“Sterling Point” is a gem. With its luxurious pacing and elevated acting, it works because it has both a more serious and nostalgic tone than recent shows in the genre. Perhaps it’s because cell-phone service is nearly non-existent on the island, or even the maturity of Rubin and Hoeferle’s performances alongside Park’s writing, but “Sterling Point” has a similar tone to 1990s dramas like “Dawson’s Creek” and “My So-Called Life,” which offers viewers of a certain age an air of nostalgia while giving Gen Z and Gen Alpha viewers a distinct level of realism that has been missing from recent series with similar tropes.  ​While romance is a major theme, “Sterling Point” also shows how parental wounds affect people well into adulthood and explains why secrets never stay buried. Set against a lush Canadian backdrop with the perfect folky-pop soundtrack, the series has a charm and a sophisticated awareness reminding audiences that, despite raging hormones and undeveloped frontal lobes, teenagers are full-fledged human beings trying to navigate the many ups and downs of life in the best ways they know how.

All eight episodes of “Sterling Point” premiere on August 5 on Prime Video.