Book Review: To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

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Reading To All the Boys I've Loved Before reminded me of Yonghwa and Seohyun's time on the Korean reality TV show, We Got Married (WGM). When WGM first announced Yongseo as their newest make-believe couple, there were grumblings that someone like Yonghwa (who was perceived as the bad boy rocker type) was being paired with the reserved, and upstanding Seohyun from Girls' Generation. During their one year tenure on the program, Yonghwa was surprisingly thoughtful of Seohyun's comfort levels as she had never dated before and was extremely awkward when meeting new people, particularly boys. I loved Yonghwa for his patience and persistence in getting her to open up to him - which Seohyun herself acknowledged. Yongseo were the first to personify for me the sweet innocence of first love, and it wasn't until now that I found a book that did the same.



Lara Jean Song is a 16 year old high school student who has been writing love letters to her old crushes for years. These letters allow her to say goodbye to her feelings and find closure before she packs them away, never to be opened again. Until one day her letters go missing, only for Lara Jean to discover they've been mailed to all her past loves.

Youtuber, Yulin Kuang, made a short adaptation of the book that I really liked:


This is Lara Jean's coming of age story as she attempts to assume Margot's role in the family while navigating her first (real?) relationship, but she does so with little grace. It was frustrating to see Lara Jean recognize her limitations (previously masked by the good will of others), but be too proud to help herself. I don't understand why she refused to use the GPS on her first lone excursion when she's self-admittedly bad with directions and terrified of driving alone. In trying to be self-reliant, Lara Jean only managed to appear misguided.

Following her car accident, she goes through the following thought process:

They'll both probably agree that I have no business driving around town unsupervised, and maybe they're right. Driving a car is a lot of responsibility. Maybe I'm not ready for it yet. Maybe I'll never be ready. Maybe even when I'm old, my sisters or my dad will have to drive me around, because that's how useless I am. (pg. 33)

Her self-deprecation is extremely irritating. Granted, anyone would be shaken after being in a motor vehicle accident, but Lara Jean gives up on driving so easily I'm amazed she managed to get her license in the first place. Even 12 year old Margot following their mom's DEATH was able to get her act together better than present day Lara Jean. Throughout the book, Lara Jean repeatedly asserts that with Margot off to college she needs to be there for Kitty just as Margot has always been there for them. And yet she claims:

After Mommy died, we all had to realign ourselves. Everybody had new roles. Margot and I were no longer locked in battle because we both understood that Kitty was ours to take care of now. (pg. 341)

Lara Jean is delusional because it's evident once Margot leaves that Lara Jean has never been self sufficient. Indeed even she believes wholeheartedly in her own incompetence. It's annoying and unfortunate that this is the frame of mind which Lara Jean directs her life: anything unfamiliar or difficult is a responsibility she feels ill-equipped for and undeserving of.

This is especially apparent when it comes to matters of the heart. Lara Jean hopes to also be someone's number one choice some day, but she conversely finds the responsibility of another person's heart burdensome. I remember back in grade 7 when I had a crush on this boy Frederick*. His older brother came up to me at the Christmas dance and said: "Hey are you Katherina? Because my brother Frederick has a crush on you." Right at that moment, I saw Frederick turn the corner and walk towards us. As soon as he saw his brother and I talking though, Frederick swiftly turned the way he came and scurried away LOL. Frederick and I never got together, in fact we were too shy to speak to each other again after that moment.


Whenever I tell this story people are often perplexed at why I was scared to pursue a relationship with someone who I knew returned my feelings. Some try to use my religion or my parents to explain it for themselves but it was neither of those things. Rather it's very true what Lara Jean says: it's paralyzing when you have a real person, with expectations and wants, in front of you. Lara Jean has quietly been pining after one boy or another, but she has never had them return her feelings at the same time. As such, she's abruptly at a loss when confronted by Peter who wants to be more than her make-believe boyfriend. Love is scary not just because it's a responsibility, but because you also have to leave yourself vulnerable enough to trust someone with the responsibility of your heart:

I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you. (pg. 354)

Regardless of Margot's reservations, I was smitten by Peter Kavinsky who was the saving grace of this book. For all the preconceived notions of Peter, he proved himself to be silly, charming, and thoughtful of Lara Jean and her family - all while being amusingly self-assured.


Just as Yonghwa was with Seohyun, Peter is furthermore cognizant that Lara Jean is fairly sheltered, and not just with regards to her love life. As Peter introduces her into his life, he coaxes her to expand her reach beyond her home life, while helping her be more independent, and self-confident (eg. when he encourages her to negotiate for herself at the estate sale). Peter recognizes that Lara Jean needs to be challenged to take chances and to speak for herself. I think more importantly this illustrates how he also believes she has that potential to rise up to those challenges. 


Although they may have initially been nothing more than arm candy for each other, Peter progressively tries to incorporate her into his life and have her meet his loved ones. He even takes the initiative to have her family get to know him, despite Lara Jean's impression that their arrangement would just be at-school. The approval of their friends and family helps to affirm their feelings for each other.


Despite all his experience, Peter has indeed only ever dated one girl. And when it comes to Lara Jean he's endearingly clueless:

Peter blinks, and he looks so young all of a sudden. "I don't understand you girls, I think I have you figured out, and then....and then...And then I don't know". (pg. 313)

This may be so as Lara Jean is "quirkier" than any girl he's known, and he's unsure at how to approach her to have her respond to him. It's adorable to see the normally self-assured Peter Kavinsky fumble when it comes to this one girl. My only real objection with their relationship is how awful their communication is and how petty they both can be as a result of it (Lara Jean especially). When Peter misses their study date, Lara Jean reflects on how she witnessed Peter and Genevieve having a personal moment outside the girl's locker room:

They didn't see me, but I saw them. They were just talking, but with Genevieve it's never just anything. She put her hand on his arm; he brushed her hair out of eyes. I may only be a fake girlfriend, but that's not nothing. (pg. 216)

First of all, Lara Jean does not have the right to feel possessive over Peter when they agreed their set up was a ruse from the start. After purposefully calling Josh to give her a ride to school as revenge, she even contemplates that "Maybe he wasn't with Genevieve and now I've just done a very petty thing out of spite." (217) No really? Lara Jean is of course developing feelings for Peter which she has yet to fully acknowledge, but even so she should have been up front with Peter and asked him what the deal was with him and Gen instead of bottling it up and taking it out on him.


Peter is no better as he is vague as hell when he says "She needed me." and "I don't expect you to understand." when Lara Jean finally does confront him. Please, if you have any feelings for Lara Jean then give her the common courtesy to at least try and help her understand. Peter feels obligated to protect Gen's privacy which is fair but you can't expect to keep Lara Jean in the dark while you stay chummy with a girl who's emotionally manipulating you. Even simply letting Lara Jean know every time he was seeing Gen would at least be more reassuring than actively hiding it from her.

What was even more infuriating was seeing Lara Jean ignore Peter's "Can we talk?" text after the ski trip and for the next few days she waits expectantly for him to text her back. Um, hello??? He already texted you, you fool, now it's YOUR turn to reply back. And yet she has the audacity to be indignant when he shows up at the family's Christmas Recital:

So now he wants to talk. Well, too late. "We don't have anything to talk about." (pg. 336)

If you're going to be upset with Peter at least be consistent! He didn't only just want to talk now, he's been trying to talk to you ever since the fiasco at the ski trip. But you purposefully didn't sit with him on the bus, and you ignored his text. As far as I can tell, he's the only one making any effort to resolve this mess between the two of you. I admire Peter for rising above the pettiness to try and reach out to her despite being hurt that Lara Jean doubted his character enough to believe he was encouraging the rumors.

Lara Jean likes to blame Peter's obliviousness to try and justify her aggravation but I really don't understand people who expect their partner to be freaking mind readers. Some things just aren't intuitive. Some times we hurt people without meaning to, but that doesn't mean we can't try to listen and adapt. Lara Jean should know by now that Peter IS capable of this (eg. when he promises be on time in the morning) and she too needs to extend Peter the same respect and explain her feelings.

At the back drop to their love story, Jenny Han also addresses the theme of change and how we respond to it. Like Margot, my older sisters also moved away for school. During that time we drifted, partly because of the age gap but more so because of the distance. With time, my family and I adjusted to them being gone and what Lara Jean said resonated with me:

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. That's why you can't save it all up like that.

Because by the time you finally see each other, you're catching up only on the big things, because it's too much bother to tell about the little things. But the little things are what make up life. (pg. 294)

Now that I'm older, my sisters and I can relate to each other much more, but I also feel sentimental of the years we lost because we didn't talk as often as we could have. Margot and Lara Jean's relationship is tested throughout the novel; not only because of the distance but because of their individual choices: Lara Jean dating Peter and Margot having sex with Josh (despite the pact the sisters made to wait until marriage). Both decisions are in a sense betrayals of the ideals the sisters have come to know and cherish about each other. Lara Jean expresses this explicitly when she discovers Josh's letter to Margot:

It's like everything I thought I knew is the opposite. I thought I knew exactly who my sister was, but it turns out I don't know anything. (pg. 182)

Margot has been a constant in Lara Jean's life, and Lara Jean is understandably jolted by the reality that her sister is growing up and making her own decisions. Comparatively, life hasn't changed so much for Lara Jean in her mind. It can be shocking to realize and difficult to accept that the people around you are changing while you've been comfortable with the way things have always been. Margot similarly expresses the loneliness of this realization when she says "But then I left and it's like you didn't need me as much as I thought...I needed you, Lara Jean." (347) The girls reconcile with the understanding that despite all the changes that have happened, Margot's reassurance at the beginning of the book still rings true: "We're the Song girls forever, remember?" (22)


Despite its faults - of which are almost entirely on the main character - I appreciated this cute, fluffy read for addressing and approaching its themes in the way that it did. I identified with the book in many ways, and the familiarity of it was refreshing. I'm happy to have at least found an author who seems to have experienced and understood the same feelings about growing up as I have and chose to write about those experiences. 

I'll leave you now with Yongseo's performance of Banmal Song - A Song for First Time Lovers:

Random Observations:
+ According to Margot, Peter supposedly isn't very smart at school, and yet if he's sitting in front of Lara Jean in class then that means he's taking AP Chemistry? How?

+ Also, Peter randomly calling Lara Jean and when she asks how he got her number he tells her "Don't worry about it." Yes, because that's not creepy at all.

+ When Peter asks her what dog she wants, Kitty replies: "An Akita. Red fur with a cinnamon-bun tail. Or a German shepherd I can train to be a seeing-eye dog." "But you're not blind." "But I could be one day."

+ I swooned so hard when Peter asked Lara Jean if she was okay when they were kissing in the hot tub. Good to see Peter watching out for Lara Jean.

+ "He definitely likes her," Kitty agrees, her mouth full. "He...he looks at you a lot, Lara Jean. When you're not paying attention. He looks at you, to see if you're having a good time."

*Name was changed to protect the individual's identity.