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

Title: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Author: Jenny Han

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Published: April 15th 2014

Format: eBook

Genre: YA

Series: To All the Boys I've Loved Before #1

Rating: ★★

Find on: Goodreads

Summary:

Lara Jean keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her.

They aren't love letters that anyone else wrote for her, these are ones she's written. One for every boy she's ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she can pour out her heart and soul and say all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly Lara Jean's love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

Thoughts:

This is a book that I've wanted to read for such a long time. In fact, it was on my most anticipated books of 2014 list. Everyone has been raving about this, and I was so excited to finally read it. However, I must say that I ended up being disappointed with this book. It was not what I expected it would be at all. I might have hyped it up too much for myself, and that's why I was disappointed, but I'm not sure. I thought this was going to be one thing, but it ended up being something that I wasn’t prepared for, and something I didn’t really enjoy.

The premise was so promising, and I absolutely fell in love with the idea of this story. The thing is, I don't think it lived up to that promise. I was missing more of what the synopsis promised. It felt like there were way too many storylines fitted in to one book, and that made me question what the main story was actually supposed to be. I did really like Jenny Han's writing though, and I do want to try and read some of her other books, to see if they would be a better fit with me.

You'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.

Our main character is Lara Jean, and I did not like her at all. She was incredibly immature, whiny (urgh, I hate that word), and oh so very annoying. There was so much unnecessary drama created by her, and it seemed like she couldn't see that she created it. It felt like nobody was ever good enough for her, and she didn't give people a fair chance. In addition to that, she was incredibly judgmental, which really pissed me off. When she had made a judgment of a person, there was almost no way for that person to escape that box they were put in. She had made up her mind, and that was that. Exclamation point.

Lara Jean acted way younger than she was supposed to be, while her younger sister Kitty, to me, acted much older than the nine years she was. There were times, where Lara Jean acted like the kids I teach in third grade. And one thing I just couldn't get behind was the fact that Lara Jean called her dad for daddy. I've always been taught that that's what you call your dad when you're a kid, and not when you're over 16. That might just be a personal thing for me, but it still annoyed me to no end.

There were two characters in the book that I actually liked. One of them is Kitty. She was such a fun character, and she had so much personality. She definitely grew on my throughout the book, and in the end, her appearances were some of the highlights. The other character I fell head over heels in love with was Peter. I honestly think that he was probably the character that went through most development, at least in his own way.

Peter was not special, and he was not perfect. He acted like your typical teenage boy would do, and I loved that about the character. Was he a jerk some of the times? of course he was, but honestly people are jerks sometime, and that's life. The thing was, I'm pretty sure he was aware of the fact that he wasn't the nicest at all times. He was a realistic character, and that was really refreshing.

Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That's the part of the risk. I don't want to be scared anymore.

A thing that I liked, was the relationship between the Song sisters (Margot, Lara Jean, and Kitty). I love books were there’s a great sibling relationship, and this story had it. At least to some extend. There were parts where I thought Lara Jean might be a little too dependent on her older sister, but it was something I could look away from. I don’t really have any thoughts on Margot. I don’t feel like she was a particularly prominent character, and I didn’t feel like we got to know her much, which might have been nice.

I loved that we got to see some of the family’s Korean heritage. There was a part in the story where their dad, who is American, had to make this Korean dish, and even though he completely butchered it, it was still a great moment to see. I would have loved to have even more of those kinds of scenes.

The romance in this book was not for me. It seemed shallow and more or less pointless. I didn’t feel the love there were supposed to be between some of the characters, and that really dragged the story down, especially since it’s made out to mainly be a story about love. I would have love to have gone deeper into those feelings

I wasn't invested in this story for most of it. It was only with the final chapters of the book, that I started caring about what would happen. However, I must say, that even though the majority of this book was not for me, I’m still going to read the sequel. The reason being that I didn’t think there was any kind of closure in this book what so ever, and I would like to see what is going to happen.