To The book I read this month

By Jaime K.

The book "To all the boys I've loved before" by Jenny Han is a story that follows Lara Jean as she goes through her junior year of high school. The story begins as Lara Jean's sister Margot is leaving for college in Scotland. Since their mother died long ago Margot always had a sort of mother role that Lara Jean now must take on for their youngest sister Kitty. Through all of this some trouble arise is Lara's life. When she develops a crush on a boy, she writes a letter to him to cope and get her feelings in order. She has written 5. Her troubles begin when she finds out that these letters have been sent out to all the people she wrote them for.

This book would feel more realistic if it were told in the perspective of a middle schooler, or even an elementary schooler. The main character seems to be immature for the age she is meant to be portrayed in. The book also have parts that seem to force a joke or a crazy moment, it just makes me want to facepalm. For example when Lara is reading a book on the porch it reads "I was just getting to the good stuff (Rosa has to attempt to seduce Nigel in order to gain access to the spy codes!)" This part was very cliche and annoying because the exclamation makes it sound so important to the main character but nobody in the audience cares. Lara also refers to her neighbor/crush/older sister's ex boyfriend as "Joshy" instead of Josh, you're not five Lara call the guy by his name. These are the parts where I feel the main character's age is not portrayed well. It also causes a bit of discomfort in me when she goes from childish mannerisms to discussing sex with her best friend, it feels like a child is hearing these things. The plot is interesting but unrealistic. In the book one of the guys who gets a letter is Peter. He confronts Lara and she becomes very embarrassed. Then when Josh received his, Lara lies and says she's dating Peter. Since Peter also wants to make his ex jealous he agrees to the fake boyfriend thing and continues to beg Lara to follow along. The part I find to be unrealistic is that Peter who is very popular is the one who must convince Lara to follow through. In real life it seems that Lara would be the one begging, Peter could get any other girl to do this for him. Another aspect that took me back to reality was when Lara went through Margot's room and found a note from Josh that said "You said you broke up with me because you didn't want to go to college with a boyfriend, but I know it's because we had sex and you're afraid to get close to me." First of all, why didn't he say this when she broke up with him? Also this was about five or so pages after Lara and her friend were arguing about whether or not Josh and Margot have had sex, why would the answer be so obvious written in a conveniently placed letter in Margot's dresser right when Lara wanted to borrow one of her tops? It's too perfect and it wasn't even information that we needed to have as an audience. As for the setup of the book I like that the chapter number changes when it's a new day and things like that, it makes the story easy to follow. However, I disliked the way chapters began. The first line of each chapter has all its letter CAPITALIZED LIKE THIS AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. I found it to be a deceiving element especially when a chapter begins on a particularly casual note, it makes me scream the words in my head all the time.

Should you seek out this book? No, I don't think it is worth the time or effort. You could read any other cliche high school book and get the same effect. Whenever there is any sort of character development the author seems to go back on it. Like when Josh got his letter, he said something once then never spoke of it again. It feels like the first page on every page and is very frustrating because of it.