Madison Meeks – Opinion Editor

mvm7037@psu.edu

Photo Credit: Sonya Smith / Weebly

Romance, Letters, and Crushes. “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” by Jenny Han is a young adult romance novel that has them all.

The novel was released on April 15, 2014, and has received two sequel novels. The book was adapted into a film for Netflix in 2018. Author Jenny Han’s inspiration for the novel came from her habit of writing love letters to boys she had a crush on in her teenage years. 

“To All the Boys” is about Lara Jean Song Covey, a sixteen-year-old, half-Korean, half-American girl, living in Virginia. She is close to both her older sister Margot and her younger sister Kitty. Throughout her life, Lara has written love letters to all the boys that she has ever had a crush on and keeps the letters in a hatbox. The hat box was given to her by her late mother who died of a head injury. The hatbox is a way that Laraconnects to her mother even though she has passed. 

In the hatbox are five letters. One to each boy that she has ever loved. Josh, her sister’s boyfriend. Kenny, a boy from camp. Peter from 7th grade. Lucas from homecoming. And finally, John Ambrose from Model UN. Lara’s sister Margot is leaving for University in Scotland and breaks up with her boyfriend Josh Sanderson, who lives next door. 

After Margot leaves for school, Lara Jean feels her once feelings for Josh come back. Lara Jean then writes a letter to Josh expressing her feelings similar to the letter she wrote when she was fourteen. 

Suddenly, Peter, one of Lara Jean’s crushes from 7th grade, walks up to her to tell her that he does not like her. While Lara is at first confused, she realizes that he is talking about the letter that she wrote to him years ago. For some reason, Peter had received his letter in the mail. While she tells him that she had written that letter years ago, it does not fix the tear in their relationship. Making the circumstance worse, Lara Jean realizes that her hatbox has gone missing. Are all of her letters floating around?

What happens with Lara and Peter or if she will pick Josh? Who took the hatbox and mailed out the letters? “To All the Boy I’ve Loved Before” is perfect for fans of romance novels and is a good read for Valentine’s day.