Books And Fandoms

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Book Review

Synopsis

Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control in this heartfelt novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series.

What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?

Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

Review

I used to not read any contemporary romance and always stuck with Fantasy or Dystopian novels, until The Fault in Our Stars. Since then, I have found myself reading tons and tons of romance, and I slowly became one of those cheesy girls who giggle at boys and gets excited if the main character has some romance with the guy. So it was a bit of a surprise for me to buy Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, because from the title it totally looks like one of those cheesy novels. How wrong was I?

“When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit.”

At the beginning, the pace was slightly slow and I kept wondering when the letters would have come, but then I figured out that this book was not just about the letters, but everything that had to do with what happened before she stopped loving those boys, and after they read her letters.

The first chapters are focused on Lara Jean’s family, and the fact that her sister is leaving for college. And how she decides to break up with her boyfriend, most importantly one of the few guys Lara Jean has ever loved, Josh. Since the beginning, I kind of hated the sister for taking away the boy Lara Jean fell in love with, maybe the first boy she ever started to truly love. But I was just too far away from the true story of the book.

Things get exciting when Peter, another boy who Lara Jean wrote a letter to, read what she had to say about her first kiss and how she now hated him. I have to admit that in real life I would not go after boys like Peter, because I know that they belong to a totally different world from mine and they would never go after a girl like me. But I found myself loving Peter since his introduction, and I immediately shifted away from Josh, and started rooting for him instead.

“My letters are for when I don't want to be in love anymore. They're for good-bye. Because after I write in my letter, I'm not longer consumed by my all-consuming love...My letters set me free. Or at least they're supposed to.”

At first I thought that the whole “fake relationship” was kind of stupid, because no one would ever do that in real life, right? But then, I don’t know, I kind of liked the idea; and loved how Peter was dealing with it, with such a nonchalance and security that Lara Jean most definitely did not have. And it also made me think about me, because what she was doing with Peter in public were the things that she wanted to do with a real boyfriend. She has never done any of that before, just like me.

I loved everything about this novel. I loved her family, how they have flaws just like every family, but they keep going strong. I loved every character (well maybe not everyone… Genevieve?), Lara’s relationship with her sisters, and how Jenny Han decided to write about a girl’s first love, with its perfect moments and its flaws.

And now, GIVE. ME. THE. SECOND. BOOK.

Review Written by {thefangirland}

Edited by {OurLittleBookClub}