Jennifer Han
My rating: ★★★
ISBN: 978-1442426702
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date of publication: April 15, 2014
Age: Grades 9 and up
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Themes: love letters, communication, family, "saving face"
Lara Jean's life has just gone from normal to crazy: her five secretly-written love letters were accidentally mailed out to her crushes. They're not really love letters, just a confession of things that Lara Jean writes down for herself (she'd never say them aloud!) and they were never meant to be sent out. Now her first kiss, the cute guy from middle school, and even her sister's ex-boyfriend are confronting her, wanting to know the truth. She thought all these crushes of hers were done and in the past...but she may be feeling a spark once again. Maybe something good can come out of this.
I will admit right now that I had a hard time putting down this book, and was staying up pretty late trying to finish it. It was building itself up for this great romantic climax and ending! But then...it just ended. I felt so unfulfilled. Granted, it has been let on that there will be some sort of sequel. But still! It just ended! I'm still frustrated about it.
As for the characters, Lara Jean was difficult for me to understand. On the one hand, she's pretty conservative and tries to live up to the ideals of her perfect older sister. On the other, she has a crazy best friend and made out randomly with a boy in the hall. She wants people to think she's dating the school's hottie, but bursts into tears when a rumor spreads that she had sex with him. It seems like these characteristics are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The boys of the book were a tad unpredictable, perhaps because their characters weren't as well developed as they could have been.
So how do I really sum this up. It was obviously a good story that kept me reading, but in the end, I was not impressed. I might recommend it to the right person.
Warning: Explicit Content
Language
Some sexuality
Find it at your library or on Amazon
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