What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song 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 pours out her heart and soul and says 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.
Comment: Last year I was browsing books at a bookstore during one of my travels and this title caught my eye. I had heard of it because it was made into a movie and although I try to avoid YA if I can, I gave in because the opinions were very positive and I imagined this would be both sweet and different from all the other contemporary YAs out there.
The only thing I can say about my attempt to convince myself of something I usually wouldn't care about (reading YAs just because they are popular) it that a reader's gut and preference should not be dismissed. I didn't dislike this book but I also didn't love it.
In this book, the protagonist is Lara Jean Song, a 16 year old girl who has quite a peaceful and mundane existence despite having lost her mother.
Lara Jean is very close to her family: her white father, who still tries to maintain some Korean based traditions, her older sister Margot who is about to study abroad in Scotland, her younger sister Kitty who really wants a dog, and a few friends like Josh, a neighbor who happens to also be Margot's boyfriend. Or almost an ex, since Margot ends things before going away.
Lara Jean's problems begin when the five love letters she wrote to the boys she liked in the past get sent by mistake, without Lara knowing about it. When she does, one of the boys talks to Lara and in a teenager thought scheme, they agree to pretend to be a couple for reasons. But will the fake everything turn into something real?
When I read the blurb of this book I was a little eager to read it because of course the American school system and traditions we get to see in movies and books are different from reality here and it always seems it's easier to imagine a good setting for a story there. Plus, thinking about my little resume above, I can see how this would seem alluring, especially for those who don't read much YA. Alas, the story wasn't as interesting as it could have, in my opinion.
Lara Jean is the narrator of this story and I can't help thinking what a waste so many authors do by not writing in third person. Yes, the 1st can put the narrator closer to the reader but if the character isn't as compelling or if the story isn't a thriller, I can't see, in the many 1st person romances I've read in my reading life, how it can be seen as a good tactic. Oh well.
This means that, by having only Lara Jean's POV two things happen: the plot developed is biased through her eyes and information that is necessary to the reader often comes from Lara in a very gullible and oblivious manner, which I can't help but see as unbelievable and unrealistic.
As for the story, I confess I expected more out of two main subjects:
Lara Jean's parents are of different origins, he's American, she was Korean. I hoped we would have more content about this but it wasn't so, I can't tell if it was because it wouldn't matter anyway or if the author never thought it could be a good sub-subject to address.
The love letters sending (and how obvious who did it and why didn't Lara Jean investigated more if she was sow worried) were the main cause of why there is a plot happening. But the author took Lara Jean towards a fake romance path rather than the adventures trying to fix the mistake and "learn" some kind of lesson from reconnecting with her past crushes. I did expect more out of this idea, which was original enough in a generation that mostly uses phons to talk and send messages.
I was already a little bored with all the foreseen clichéd steps in this novel regarding the romance and the teenager dilemmas but I thought the end, at least, would give me good reason to enjoy the book more.
Apparently, I was wrong because in the midst of my lack of awareness that there were more books (in the trilogy) to come, this wouldn't be the actual end, so I can guess but I didn't read what is supposed to happen to really finish this story.
Oh well, the writing was easy and fluid enough to entertain but I don't think I'll read the other two novels, at least not so soon...
Grade: 6/10
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