Review : Jenny Han : To All The Boys I've Loved Before

​​★★★★☆

The way it happens is a strange sort of serendipity. A slow-motion train wreck. For something to go this colossally wrong, everything must intersect and collide at the exact right, or in this case, wrong, moment... And maybe this whole thing would not have happened. But it did.
                                                                                          To All The Boys I've Loved Before, p.46.

First, man I'll tell you: S**T gets real at Chapter 20.

​My advice to you is to stick it out till Ch.20. If you can just do that you'll be fine. I swear. Lara Jean Song Covey will have hooked you, the simple sentence structure will have become endearing, and if you're like me and decided to binge read this trilogy after watching the Netflix movie, then well, pfft ​EVERYTHING starts to happen in Chapter 20. That being said, don't try to skip ahead y'all really need to experience the context of Chapters 1-19.

Next, if I had written a book in high school, if I had actually gone to school in high school instead of homeschooling, then, this would have been the book I wrote.

Last, and most importantly,

Dear Whoever Is Loves Me
&
Is Lucky To Be Loved By Me,

Lets run away together,
live in the
cobblestoney part of downtown,
and
​own a dog 🐶.

Love,
Anna

​   REVIEW 

​"To All The Boys I've Loved Before"  by Jenny Han is a great soapy, sappy, teenage love story and I loved most of all the seconds I spent binge reading it. 

plot:

This is a classic tale of awkward high school love. It is complicated by a girl who lost her mother at a young age in a truly tragic and freak accident and is facing her Junior Year of high school without her sister, Margot, who has gone off to college in Scotland. Talk about a tough break.
During the course of Lara Jean Song Covey's Junior Year we are told about how she's struggling to be an adult-teenager, deal with possibly loving Margot's ex-boyfriend and thus betraying her sister, on top of facing her fear of commitment when a new love interest falls into her lap.

characters:

Lara Jean Song Covey: The main protagonist. The epic feeler. The Love-Letter sender. Lara Jean is perhaps the most relatable teenager I've experienced in a YA-Contemporary novel. Lara Jean was who teenage-Anna was back in high school, and let's be real here, still kinda is today. Her issues with commitment and her fear of love is spot-on for why I also fear men, love, and commitment. 
Her internal thoughts mirror Past-Anna thoughts so perfectly that I often found myself chuckling fondly at tidbits like: "I wonder if they have stalls in there, or just a bunch of shower heads and no privacy." Like on the real though, how do boys feel comfortable showering in locker rooms? She's also apparently funny, quirky, and cute; all the things I literally have been called before and seriously probably am. 
She also does things like run up to a boy and kisses him, movie-style, just to convince another boy she actually likes that she does not in fact like him, when she does. Classic Anna move. 
Like Lara Jean, I also wrote letters and kept them in a wooden box that looked like a very large book that my grandma had given me. Also like Lara Jean, I take those letters out and reread from time to time to affirm my emotions at the time and see how different I am from that scared, traumatized, little girl. Unlike Lara Jean, my letters never got out. 
Honestly, I could just continue forever to talk about how Lara Jean's voice progressively, throughout the entire book, just gets more real and more: YAS *poetic snaps*.

Margot Song Covey: The perfect one. The good "craic". The Good. The one who left for Scotland while simultaneously breaking Josh's heart. She doesn't feature much in the meat of narrative but she's an inspiration. I think Margot and Lara Jean's relationship is a bit like my brother and I's relationship, post-his move out of the house during my sophomore year of high school.

Kitty Song Covey: The feisty one. The one who set things in motion. Also Kitty and Peter's relationship is just about the second best part of this book. 
​
​Josh: The boy next-door. The coveted. Often referred to as "Margot's Josh".

Peter K.:  The handsome one. AKA Kavinsky. AKA the handsome at first glance but really beautiful one. The beauty boy. The one with long eye lashes. The one with unfairly long eyelashes. Honestly, he's my favorite, next to Lara Jean. Every interaction Peter and Lara Jean have together is perfect and witty and the best. That's all.

Chris: The stray cat you always wanted. Or, if you're like me, the stray cat you abducted from the golf course you live adjust to and hid in your room for a day until you found out that you may or may not have gotten lice from it. On a more related note *cough* I seriously had a friend just like Chris in high school. The rebellious, running away from family drama teenager who feels unheard, unloved, and somehow picked on at home and so turns to the wildness of the night. Her brash, wild-n-crazy, tell-it-straight attitude was great. She kinda wasn't emotionally there for Lara Jean but you know the Chris's of the world never really are. 
I also know 100% that I would genuinely follow the Chris's anywhere in the world, solely because I believed in their vision.
​
Gen: The popular one. The Gen of the Gen and Kavinsky Institution. The kinda mean person. The one you kinda felt for by the end but didn't actually want to admit that to yourself because like the main protagonist is YOU and you have to back YOU up.

overall:

1. Dude tho, I kinda digged this novel so hard. I've also seen the Netflix movie a lot of times.
2. This read is a fast-paced, light, and fun. So, hop on the ride if that's what you're looking for right now.
3. You'll be laughing in sort chuckle-bursts and rooting for Peter K. and Lara Jean from the first moment he rolls down his Audi window. (Also, hat-tip to whoever decided to give him a Jeep in the movie, waaaay better choice.)
4. What I really enjoyed though is that underneath the funny, girl-just-living-her-high-school-life-to-the-fullest was a girl who was dealing with some major traumatic s**t man. And, let me you, as a girl who was also dealing with a death of a loved one and the realization that no matter how hard you love someone they can leave you and you can have no say in that. I think if I had been able to read this book back when I was in high school I would have really felt a solidarity with Lara Jean, and recently with the death of my father I resonate so much with her struggle to find identity and love and how to do that after a parent passes. 
5. I would like to know: Where do they live even? I feel like it's a place that gets cold and is in an idyllic middle America town? Where teenage boys somehow have black Audi's???
6. I really liked the more natural start to this "fake" dating thing. I mean don't get me wrong the movie was Magic. But, it was a movie and thus unrealistic. I don't think anyone believed that a guy would forget about the girl he'd lost his virginity to and was madly in love with since 7th grade in a two week time span. I mean come on Netflix.  The book, however, the book was seriously more legit. Or, perhaps the correct word is organic. The development of their relationship felt more organic in the book than in the movie.
7. The sweet love story was so endearing and slow that I found myself looking for the subtle moments that showed it. It was lovely. The moment when Peter places his head in Lara Jean's lap was the first time I noticed what Jenny Han was doing and from then on the game got good.
8. Now that I've read the book, I see the movie is the perfect companion, it takes all the best and mushes them together. The way movies ought to. I hope this trilogy wont be like Twilight in a decade from now where no one pays mind to it and people who loved it are suddenly scared to say so. I mean, I loved Twilight.
9. Now that I've read the book I can't exactly bring myself to watch the movie again. But, I sure am glad there's two more books to read. 

Fav Quotes:

"Did you run up to Kavinsky and kiss him like a manic?"​

"I miss her so much. Nothing's the same without her. "
​
"It's a cozy day: it's nearly six o'clock, and I'm still in my pj's."

"Josh gives me a funny look. 'That's not what he was saying today at McCall's.' What in the world was Peter K. doing at a bookstore?"

"'Yes, of course I know what that means.' I have no idea what that means. I make a mental note to ask Chris the next time I see her."

"I think throwing Peter off guard could be a fun hobby for me."

"I smile a secret smile."

"My favorite decade is the aughts, which means the 1900s."

​"Peter's so Peter."

"I'm just waiting for the next question. You never just have one question."

"When that piece makes sense, everything else starts to."

"He has a high emotional IQ."

"A zany little detour..."

"I guess Santa shops at Costco too."

To All The Boys I've Loved Before
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