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A review by mynameismarines
To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
2.0
This book has a decent amount of hype surrounding it, so I definitely had high expectations. As you can tell from my star rating, those expectations just weren't met.
To be fair, this wasn't a bad book. It was cute, and had the kind of romance that the YA contemporary genre thrives on: super handsome boy, pretty, quirky girl who doesn't know how pretty she is, bad girl best friend, super popular mean girl at school, and even a perfectly acceptable, nice boy present to confuse our main character's feeling. I read it in four hours, one night before bed, and it's the type of the book that is perfectly made for that sort of single sitting reading.
The gimmick of this particular book was supposed to be these letter that go out to all of the boys Lara Jean has ever "loved." Almost immediately, the narrator amends that premise. They aren't really love letters. More like a few lines she writes when she's getting over a guy. And love is a very strong word there too. On top of that, 3 of the letters that get sent out are kind of non-issues. The other two set up the love triangle, but it's a launching point, and not really something that effects the plot enough to break it out of the tropey norm.
My biggest issue with the book was Lara Jean's voice. She was supposed to be a slightly sheltered almost 17-year-old and she read only slightly older than her 9-year-old sister. It was particularly trying in the beginning of the book as we were being straight told facts (she is my sister who is like this. This is my father who does this and is like this. Etc.) It was all a bit graceless and it took a while before I found myself even enjoying the fluff.
And really that's what it comes down to: this was acceptable fluff.
My favorite part of the book was actually the family relationship. My favorite passages came from the sisters, specifically the "big" (again, a couple of pages. Plot points weren't very fleshed out here) fight between Lara Jean and Margot. What the author had to say about sisters hit a soft spot for me.
The book didn't really have an ending. I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger either, because I knew exactly where the author was headed. It just felt like she didn't tell me it. It felt like there were a couple of pages left off the end of the book. I turned the page, thinking there was more, because it even ends mid sentence.
So, all in all, cute, easy read, but not particularly impressive in any regard.
To be fair, this wasn't a bad book. It was cute, and had the kind of romance that the YA contemporary genre thrives on: super handsome boy, pretty, quirky girl who doesn't know how pretty she is, bad girl best friend, super popular mean girl at school, and even a perfectly acceptable, nice boy present to confuse our main character's feeling. I read it in four hours, one night before bed, and it's the type of the book that is perfectly made for that sort of single sitting reading.
The gimmick of this particular book was supposed to be these letter that go out to all of the boys Lara Jean has ever "loved." Almost immediately, the narrator amends that premise. They aren't really love letters. More like a few lines she writes when she's getting over a guy. And love is a very strong word there too. On top of that, 3 of the letters that get sent out are kind of non-issues. The other two set up the love triangle, but it's a launching point, and not really something that effects the plot enough to break it out of the tropey norm.
My biggest issue with the book was Lara Jean's voice. She was supposed to be a slightly sheltered almost 17-year-old and she read only slightly older than her 9-year-old sister. It was particularly trying in the beginning of the book as we were being straight told facts (she is my sister who is like this. This is my father who does this and is like this. Etc.) It was all a bit graceless and it took a while before I found myself even enjoying the fluff.
And really that's what it comes down to: this was acceptable fluff.
My favorite part of the book was actually the family relationship. My favorite passages came from the sisters, specifically the "big" (again, a couple of pages. Plot points weren't very fleshed out here) fight between Lara Jean and Margot. What the author had to say about sisters hit a soft spot for me.
The book didn't really have an ending. I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger either, because I knew exactly where the author was headed. It just felt like she didn't tell me it. It felt like there were a couple of pages left off the end of the book. I turned the page, thinking there was more, because it even ends mid sentence.
So, all in all, cute, easy read, but not particularly impressive in any regard.