Review | To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Series)

The Book(s): To All the Boys I've Loved Before; P.S. I Still Love You; Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han

Date(s) Published: April 15, 2015; May 26, 2015; May 2, 2017

Date(s) Read: November 30 - December 5, 2018 (yes, I did read this entire series in 5 days)

Current Goodreads Rating(s): 4.15/5; 4.14/5; 4.17/5

Hello, my name is Emma and I have watched the Netflix movie To All the Boys I've Loved Before a total of four times and I will probably watch it eight more times before the end of the year. I think I could stare at Noah Centineo's face for at least 12 hours if not more and I wish I could hang out with Lana Condor/steal all of Lara Jean's outfits.

So, being a bookworm and English major, I couldn't just watch the movie and not read the book series that inspired it. I did it with The Notebook (which was honestly a mistake, but I digress) and I couldn't help my curiosity for this series.

So does it live up to the hype? Well, let me start out by saying I read the first book in three days, the second book in one day, and the third in less than five hours. So....yeah. It lives up to the hype.

Honestly, Lana and Noah do a great job in the Netflix movie, but I honestly think the book made me fall even more in love with the characters. There was just something about the way Han talks about Lara Jean and Peter navigating their teenage lives together that made me really believe this relationship.

Let's break it down by book, shall we?

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

We've all seen it by now. It was probably one of the bigger movies of 2018 and it wasn't even in theaters. People around the world fell in love with Lara Jean and her sisters Margo and Kitty.

Honestly, the movie is very similar to the book. (Side note: GOOD JOB PRODUCERS!) There are some things that the book goes more in depth into, but I always expect some details to get cut. For example, the relationship between the Song girls and their mother is a lot more pronounced than in the movie. The reader can really feel that empty spot in the Covey family, but its almost like a wound that's begun to heal. It still hurts occasionally when you think about it and there will always be a scar, but eventually things get better.

I'm not saying the movie didn't do this, but I think the book had more time and space to fill with that sense of growth and loss.

Lets talk about Peter Kavinsky. Is it weird that I'm attracted to Peter K.? I mean Noah Centineo is 22 years old, but Peter K. is 16-18 throughout the series. It might be problematic, but no biggie. I'll just say this: if I went to high school with Peter Kavinsky I would probably be obsessed with him, but I would never actually talk to him. Look, we've all been in high school at some point. It is actual murder.

Book Peter K. has so much more depth. I don't know if its the way that Jenny Han writes or if I'm just projecting my high school crushes onto this book that admittedly made me very nostalgic (more on that later), but Peter felt so real to me. He said stupid things, he did things without thinking about Lara Jean, but goddamn did he love this girl even if he wasn't fully aware of that fact 100% of the time.

Lets talk about Lara Jean and the Covey Crew. I am always and forever going to see John Corbet as Dr. Covey. He was in my brain as I was reading the series and I am totally ok with that. In the book Dr. Covey seems a little bit more bumbling than movie Dr. Covey, but not so much that it was distracting. He's a middle-aged man trying to raise three girls on his own. Honestly I'm kind of surprising he's not bumbling like all the time in the movie.

Margo is Margo (as Lara Jean would say). She has some problematic opinions on her sister's dating life, but she is also the older sister/mother figure so I get it. I thought Janel Parish did a great job as Margo, but it was a little weird that Janel is like 30 and she was playing an 18 year old, but I'll suspend my disbelief for just a little bit. I really liked reading her butt heads with Lara Jean and Dr. Covey. Poor Margo was forced to grow up way too fast and because of that she's either arguing with Lara Jean for being too much of a mother or she's arguing with Dr. Covey because she's behaving way too much like an adult while she is still a child.

Kitty was probably the most different in my opinion. I really liked her in the movie, but the book version felt...different...for some reason. Not that that was bad, but I just couldn't make my mind's eye see Anna Cathcart as the book version.

All in all, I thought the movie was a pretty solid companion with Han's book series. I mean, I did read this book in three days.

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P.S. I Still Love You

Fun Fact: the beginning of this book is the ending of the Netflix movie. Can you imagine what it would be like if we didn't get to see the resolution of Lara Jean and Peter K.'s relationship? Like we didn't even know there was going to be a sequel until like a week ago. What if a sequel had never happened and we were forced to come up with our own endings?

Basically, if you've watched the Netflix version all the way through then you're aware of the beginning of P.S. I Still Love You. Enter John. He's one of the five recipients of Lara Jean's infamous letters and he finally responds back to her with a cute little letter of his own.

Ok, I'm a Peter K. fan. He's adorable and sweet and a little bumbling, but he cares about Lara Jean. However, I don't think anyone can read P.S. I Still Love You and not think that John is a better love interest for Lara. Peter has that whole problematic relationship with Gen and doesn't seem to understand why Lara is so against it. John, on the other hand, actually seems to like Lara (not that Peter doesn't) and does sweet things for her. Honestly, if I were Lara and I found out that my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend posted a video of me in a hot tub in an attempt to sabotage my new relationship I would be incredibly pissed, especially when my boyfriend took his ex-girlfriend's side.

Don't get me wrong. I am happy that Lara Jean and Peter worked it out, but holy crap girlfriend. John is so nice to you and he doesn't come with like 800 pounds of baggage. Also, this book introduced John's grandmother Stormy and holy crap is Stormy a piece of work.

My first and second jobs were in retirement homes so I dealt with a lot of residents similar to Stormy and the other elderly in the retirement home that Lara Jean volunteers at. Stormy reminded me a lot of a resident I used to serve named Mrs. Hacker. She was a retired sex therapist and used to say things like, "We are sexual beings from the womb to the tomb." She passed away several years ago, but I don't think I could ever forget her. In fact, she was apparently reborn in this character of Stormy. Stormy said some pretty problematic things as most elderly people do, but she also encouraged Lara Jean to try new things and have new experiences. I think Stormy is a major factor in Lara Jean's development as a character. She was definitely better at relaying her feelings to Peter.

This book felt like the second half to a friendship bracelet or necklace. I really enjoyed reading about Lara Jean developing more into herself. She still talked to Margo a lot to get her advice, but she was also more comfortable in making her own decisions. The ending really felt like the end of a nice early 2000s teen movie: one that ends with a sense of hope for the future whatever it may bring.

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Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Written two years after the original two, Always and Forever, Lara Jean, definitely has a different feeling. This takes place a year to a year and a half after P.S. I Still Love You. Now, in her senior year of high school Lara is starting to consider her future and this includes her future with Peter Kavinsky.

That jump in time is pretty noticeable in my opinion. I still managed to devour this book in four hours or less and I rated it the same as I rated the other two, but I would say that this book doesn't really feel like part of the series. Sure, the characters are the same and it advances the plot further, but the time jump gave this book a very different feel from the other two.

For one thing, Josh isn't even in it (Margo's original boyfriend). This is by no means a deal breaker, but the fact that Josh had graduated and gone off to college elsewhere was kind of sad. It was almost like that point in your life when you look around and realize that your parent's hair has gone gray and you are older and you don't know when that happened. All of a sudden things are different.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this book made me incredibly nostalgic. The story of how my husband and I met and eventually got married is by no means as complicated or interesting as how Lara Jean and Peter K got together, but there was just something about this story that made me nostalgic for my high school years. This book focuses mostly on where Lara and Peter will be after graduating and how their relationship would hold out while at college. At first Lara Jean was content to follow Peter to whatever college he wanted to go to, but when her plans didn't work out she had to make some quick changes in her life plan.

There was just something about reading about Lara Jean and Peter's plans that reminded me so strongly of my senior year of high school. All my friends were talking about going to various colleges around the state and the country. I met my future husband in our prom group, but didn't really get to know him until after we had graduated. We started dating the July after our graduation and, one month later, I was leaving for college in a town about an hour west of our hometown while he stayed local. We had to figure out who was visiting on which weekend and it was definitely difficult. When Lara Jean and Peter were stressing out about how their relationship was going to survive the distance I saw me and Nathan trying to figure out this long distance thing too.

Seven years later, two of them married, I don't really think about that point in our relationship anymore. I have lived in the same town and the same house as my husband for at least four years if we don't count the years in school where I wasn't on his lease, but I basically lived with him. Since I'm projecting my life experience onto this book, I'm positive that Lara Jean and Peter will end in the same way. Sure, the characters both had their moments of childishness and insecurity, but who didn't at that point in their life?

Hopefully Netflix makes the entire series within the next year or so. That way I can watch them all on repeat and cry about my lost childhood while also hopefully looking toward the future.

Long story short:

• Noah Centineo, I would leave my husband for you.

• Who knew that a YA series could make this emotionless husk feel things?

• Hold onto your childhood, kids.

My Rating: 4/5 across the board