To All the Boys I´ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
So, the story is about Lara Jean, who has had five crushes throughout her life and every time she falls in love with someone and she wants to get over them, she writes love letters about how much she likes them or just some simple confessions she has or thoughts about them. Being a rising junior, she has to say goodbye to Margot, her older sister, who is going to Scotland to study and she eventually breaks up with their neighbor, Josh, the guy that Lara Jean has a crush on and has had for many years.
But that´s not the only problem Lara Jean has to face being a junior, suddenly all of her letters have been sent, including Josh´s.
So, while trying to get away from him since he´s Margot´s ex-boyfriend, she kisses Peter Kavinsky, one of her older crushes to get Josh to forget about the letter, and suddenly, Peter has the fantastic idea of them pretending to be dating because he has just broken up with Genevive, the girl he has been dating since seventh grade, and surprisingly, Lara Jean accepts.
But Margot being gone, Lara Jean has to take care of the house, including her father and her little sister, Kitty, and things that were usually under Margot´s responsibility.
Lara Jean´s junior year is all about trying to take care of her family and surviving a crazy love life with the school´s most popular guy.
I loved this novel because it tells so many different sides of a story that I truly felt like I always got the whole picture of the things that were happening in the lives of the characters.
First, I want to talk about the relationships that the characters had with each other. I loved seeing romantic relationships, family relationships, and friendships. My favorite was probably the family relationships that we could see because they felt more natural in a way because they seemed much closer to our reality. The Song sisters (Margot, Lara Jean, and Kitty) lost their mother when they were very young, so they are under the care of their father, who is a very busy doctor, and Margot is in charge of the family and the household, she literally takes care of everything, from packing lunches to Thanksgiving cooking. And what stayed with me the most within this family was that when Margot and Lara Jean were supposed to be having fun with their friends, they still took the time to care about their family, try to create a cozy atmosphere for Kitty and also take care of their father. So, in a way, they matured quicker than others. Also, the manner in which the sisters were almost pushed to take responsibilities seemed very natural under their circumstances and they seemed very real and humane to me.
On the other hand, it was heartbreaking to read about Lara Jean´s childhood friendships because I think that we all have those kinds of friendships that we move on from throughout the years and at some point they are just kept inside of us as little memories or moments that may have brought us happiness sometime in our lifetime, but we never really do a lot to keep them alive, so reading about little Lara Jean with her little friends was a way of realizing that there are so many things we forget about in our lives, including people that may have changed our points of views or our realities. I truly believe that although it was expressed as a very unimportant topic, it really touched me because I personally have friendships that have been lost and I don´t really cherish them because I have moved on, yet I still have a part inside that wonders if things could´ve been different.
Now, I want to talk about the characters because they are very special to me.
First of all, her family members. I love her father because he really tries to keep an ideal family and tries to act both as a father and mother figure to the three daughters. Margot was a character that I liked to read about because she is like the typical older sister you want to have with you, you could always look up to her since she is always right and knows how to keep everything under control. Lastly, Kitty is the little sister we all need, she is funny and can create the best atmosphere for the other characters, and I think that she played a crucial part in the improvement in Lara Jean and Peter´s relationship.
Moving on to love interests, I loved both Josh and Peter. I have to admit that the first time I read the novel, I was swept off the ground by Josh and his boy-next-door charm because I just loved simple and sweet guys, but now that I had given Peter a chance after having read the second book a couple of years ago, it was easier for me to like him and adore him because let´s admit it, Peter is adorable! I loved Peter´s sense of humor and the way he brings out a new side of Lara Jean after saying goodbye to her older sister. Also, Lara Jean gets to experience new adventures in her junior year with Peter.
We could say that Peter and Josh are the exact opposite. Josh is sweet, while Peter is arrogant and cocky, but they are both definitely charming and lovely. Oh, and they hate each other because Josh called Peter out during a Spanish test in seventh grade because Kavinsky was copying.
On the other hand, I want to talk about how much I LOVED Lara Jean. She was the character that I could identify myself with the most because I just realized that we have the same age and that she had a crush on Peter at the same age that I fell in love with him too, but I believe that besides the age similarity, it was the culture. After all, she´s half-Korean and I am Korean, so it was very interesting to notice part of my culture in a YA book, but I would like to explain that later on. Now, going back to the whole age similarity thing, I loved how I could relate to being eager to get an activity done, be part of a club or nailing your ACT and SAT scores for college, so seeing a girl that was so similar to me was amazing. Not only we had a similar cultural background, we were both stranded in high expectations from someone we look up to because of college.
Now, going back to the whole Korean culture part, I loved reading about it because it made me feel like I belonged. Being able to read about Korean festivities, like how we wear hanboks in New Year´s Eve and we get money from our elders, or all the amazing dishes, like bo ssam, made me so so happy. I think to see a part of my culture so nicely portraited in our media platform today was the best part of the novel because it is very easy for someone to mess it up or say something that could not be right, but Jenny Han did it just right!
Though, there was this one part that´s really going to stay with me. So, Lara Jean is going to celebrate Halloween at her high school and she is choosing her costume and at the end, she has to go dressed up as Cho Chang from Harry Potter because if she decides to wear some thing else, people think that she´s just dressed up as a manga character and being an Asian myself, I know that feeling very well. It´s as if you feel different when other people are able to dress up as something as simple as a princess or a very well-known character costume because you don´t look the part and when people notice that you are far too different from the character that you were trying to be, they immediately think that you are another character that you may not even know about! Noticing the real struggles that were portraited in the story for being from a different ethnicity was something that the novel took lightly, but I will cherish it because it was the best way to show the media how different we feel at simple times as Halloween.
Another thing that I absolutely loved about the novel was how Lara Jean feels pressured by the society into being part of a relationship and being like everyone else because Lara Jean and I are so alike in the sense that we prefer being with our family and we don´t really like going to parties, so actually reading about peer pressure in our society today was something that I really liked. Also, I liked how Lara Jean was still herself after she was Peter for too long and after going to all those parties and being in the spotlight at her high school, she still preferred being with her family and I really admired that because I believe that if I was in her position, I would do the same thing.
In conclusion, To All the Boys I´ve Loved Before by Jenny Han is a fun and refreshing story that portrays a lot the different topics in our society today. Also, it will keep you up all night thinking about Peter and Josh because of all their adorable flaws. You will love the characters that surround Lara Jean as much as you will like her, although she sometimes frustrated me with her decisions. I recommend this book a lot if you want something very funny to read, yet with a little drama.
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