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C**S
To all the boys I’ve loved before made me want to be the fourth Song ...
Catfairy's First ThoughtsPresently at this moment, I am writing this review and swaying to my Lara Jean Motown playlist on Spotify and eating an oatmeal raisin cookie. (I know…I know…Lara Jean…could make much more creative cookies…such as those cowgirl cookies and don’t forget those snickerdoodles!)If I could sum up my feelings for this book in one word, I would simply use a word that isn’t listed in the Cambridge English Dictionary and that word would be…adorbs!To all the boys I’ve loved before made me want to be the fourth Song sister and I just loved all the things about the main character of Lara Jean! I want to live in the world of Lara Jean and raid her adorable vintage outfits and use her heart hole puncher! After all, how can you not love a girl who has a heart hole puncher?description“Because after I write my letter, I’m no longer consumed by my all-consuming love. I can eat my cereal and not wonder if he likes bananas over his Cherrios too: I can sing along to love songs and not be singing them to him. If love is like a possession, maybe my letters are like my exorcisms. My letters set me free. Or at least they’re supposed to.”-Lara JeanCatnopsisdescriptionTo all the boys I’ve loved before is the first contemporary romance book of a trilogy who introduces the dainty character of Lara Jean. Lara Jean lives with her father and two other sisters named Margot and Kitty. The sisters call themselves the Song girls because their mother’s maiden name is Song and the sisters have a strong connection to their mother. Their mother died at an early age and they also share more of their mother’s physical features which is Korean and their father is Caucasion.“We are the three Song girls. There use to be four. My mom, Eve Song. Evie to my dad, Mommy to us, Eve to everyone else. Song is, was, my mom’s last name. Our last name is Covey-Covey like lovey, not like cove. But the reason we are the Song girls and not the Covey girls is my mom used to say that she was a Song girl for life, and Margot said then we should be too. We all have Song for our middle name, and we look more Song than Covey anyway, more Korean than white.”The Song girls are an absolute trip! Margot is the responsible and smart sister who plays mom to the whole family. Kitty is the baby sister in the family who is always causing trouble and is way too smart and spunky for her own good! They have so much fun together and have so many cute traditions that they share like the CHRISTMAS COOKIE BONANZA!When Lara Jean falls in love with a boy she writes them a love letter professing her adoration and that’s how she gets these boys out of her system. After she finishes writing the love letter she methodically hides them in a charming teal vintage hatbox that her mother bought her. Until one day the letters are gone and all the five boys “she has loved before” receive her love letters and this is the one moment where all the boys of her past come out of the woodwork and Lara has to make a choice to either hide in her world of love letters or face the truth of her emotions, and finally live her life.Meet Lara Jean played by Tiffany HwangdescriptionLara Jean is your proverbial dreamy eyed teenager who is in love with love but is terrified of it at the same time. Although she has a dramatic and individualistic style down to her vintage clothes and her innate attention to detail.The character of Lara Jean is someone who fantasizes about love and sees it through rose colored glasses more than the real reality of it. She would rather love the boys from afar and obsess over them but never fully commit to them.Lara Jean truly walks to the beat of her own drum and that's what makes her full of awesomeness!“I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you. And Peter does. He seems me, and I see him.” -Lara JeanMeet Peter Kavinsky played by Harry Stylesdescription“That’s when I see him. Peter Kavinsky, walking down the hallway. Like magic. Beautiful, dark-haired Peter. He deserves background music, he looks so good.” -Lara JeanPeter Kavinsky’s is one of the five boys that Lara Jean professed her undying love to.Peter is that quintessential guy in school that one loves to hate and hates to love at the same time. He is a popular jock who everyone is friends with and who everyone wants to be friends with. Peter has such a self-assurance about himself that it can make anyone feel that all is good and right with the world.“I think you’re cute. In a quirky way.” –Peter KavinskyIf I was in high school Peter would be one of my fictional high school boyfriends! He is just the most appealing, irresistible, and infuriating character that I have ever read about! Peter is someone you want to kiss and slap across the face at the same time! The back and forth banter between Lara Jean and Peter is just priceless and he brings out the feisty side of Lara Jean. Peter brings Lara Jean out of her shell and makes her realize that love is not a sugar-coated fantasy and in order to love someone you need to first be honest with yourself.Meet Josh played by Skyler AstinJosh is part of the love letter debacle as well and also part of a love triangle between Lara Jean, Peter, and Josh.Josh dated Lara Jean’s sister Margot and when they suddenly broke up Josh receives Lara Jean’s love letter. Lara Jean is horrified by the fact that he received this love letter because she would never admit her feelings to Josh since he dated her sister. In order to avoid conflict, she pretends to date Peter Kavinsky. This also benefits Peter because he is currently breaking up with Lara Jean’s ex-friend mean girl Genevieve for the millionth time and wants to get her jealous. And so the plot thickens…Josh is your typical do-gooder guy that is always there for you when you need it. Josh is like the Dawson Leery in your life that is always there to lend a shoulder to cry on and yada, yada, yada…Honestly, the character of Josh didn't really get my attention. He seemed to be a very dry and humdrum character to me. I felt like I didn't know enough about Josh for me to genuinely like him as a character. There just wasn't enough depth to the character of Josh which leads me to definitely be Team Peter.Now Lara Jean has a choice. Does she want the bad boy Peter (aka Pacey Witter) or the do-gooder Josh (aka Dawson Leery)?descriptiondescriptionJenny Han’s WritingdescriptionCatfairy and Jenny Han Book SigningOverall, it’s great to see that YA novels are representing more diversity than ever before. The author Jenny Han who is herself Korean perfectly exemplifies the Korean culture. She also beautifully describes the struggle that Lara Jean goes through with being half Korean and Half-Caucasian.This book is written in the first person and it’s a very character-driven novel and it’s what makes this book come alive! To all the boys I’ve loved before would not have been the same book if it wasn’t for the unique characters that she had in this novel! It is easy to get lost in the world of the Song sisters! When I read this book, I felt like I was personally invited to the home of the Song sisters and I got to know them so well, that I grew attached to each of them.Catfairy Final Thoughts“When someone’s been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just like clutching air and grit. That’s why you can’t save it all up like that.” -Lara JeanEach of the Song sisters will have a peace of my heart and I am so happy that there are two other books in this series so I don’t have to say goodbye just yet!Even though, I love all the Song sisters it is "obvi" that Lara Jean is my favorite of them all! I love how she is an individual and doesn’t change for anyone or anything! Most teenagers have the pressure to conform to what is cool and what is not cool. Lara Jean is her own person and she doesn’t care about that which is an inspiration for all teenage girls. Being yourself is the coolest thing you can be!This book is the kind of book that makes you reminisce on what it is like to truly fall in love for the first time, how you romanticize it in your head, how scary it is, and how amazing it is all at once!
A**R
Had me up until 2AM to finish reading
The Covey family are extremely close, especially since the death of their mother a few years ago. Now it’s dad and his three Song girls (their Korean mother’s maiden name) – youngest is Kitty, middle is Lara Jean and eldest Margot keeps the family in line. But when Margot leaves for her first year of college in Scotland, the family are thrown into upheaval. Not least because before leaving home, Margot breaks up with her beloved boyfriend Josh who lives next door and has become so much apart of their family.Now it’s up to Lara Jean to keep their daddy and Kitty in line, to be the responsible oldest sister. But it’s hard when everyone has depended on Margot for so long, and when Josh’s new single status has Lara Jean remembering that she liked him first, but stepped aside when he admitted his feelings for Margot.Life becomes complicated when some private letters of Lara Jean’s are mysteriously sent – worse yet, they’re love letters. Lara Jean wrote five letters to the five boys she has loved (from afar) in her life. Josh is one of them, and in the fallout she can barely stand to be around him. Another is Peter Kavinsky – the most handsome boy in school who stole Lara Jean’s first kiss, and has since been linked to her former friend (now frenemy) Genevieve ever since.When Peter reads his letter he’s both insulted and insulting – telling Lara Jean that while she’s “cute, in a quirky way” he’s not interested in her. But when Lara Jean and Josh’s relationship becomes even most strained by her secret, and Genevieve dumps Peter for an older boy, the two of them come up with a plan to fake a relationship and try to make their respective crushes/ex’s jealous.‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ is the new contemporary young adult novel from YA queen, Jenny Han. It’s the first in a duology, with ‘P.S. I Still Love You’ set for 2015 release.I was really, really hesitant to read this novel. I absolutely loved the first two books in Han’s ‘Summer’ series – ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ and ‘It's Not Summer Without You’ – were brilliant, but final book in that contemporary YA trilogy ‘We'll Always Have Summer’ was absolutely awful. I actually still have a bit of a reader’s grudge against Han for making me fall in love with those characters only to do a complete character assassination in the finale. So, like someone who has been bitten once, I went into ‘All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ intrigued by the premise and adoring the cover (diversity!) but wary of this author I’ve been burned by in the past … but I can safely say Han hooked me again, and this book is now a favourite of 2014.Lara Jean Song Covey is a quite shy, awkward and inexperienced 16-year-old. Han finds a perfect pitch for her, so she doesn’t come across as a Bambi-eyed contrived Mary Sue but an endearing homebody with a penchant for baking and scrap-booking (I could see a lot of my high-school self in Lara Jean). Lara Jean lives the wild side vicariously through her friend Chris, a slut-shamed young woman who has a million stories to tell and is whispered about by their classmates.Han’s first-person narration is really quite beautiful and easy to fall into. Lara Jean has such a lot of history in this town, and connections to so many of her classmates that she brings up old anecdotes about kids she used to hang out with in elementary school.I really loved Han’s scene-setting and getting to know the Covey family, particularly the close relationship between the Song girls. Han’s light touch with discussions of being biracial is also refreshing (Lara Jean grouses that she has a strict “Asian characters only” Halloween costume rule now, since people always assume she's a Manga character anyway).The drama with the love letters and Lara Jean’s old crush on Josh is teased out slowly, but hits like a cyclone when Peter Kavinsky gets involved and comes up with a fake relationship plan for him and Lara Jean (with a warning that she shouldn’t fall in love with him in the process).Readers will know where the story is heading from a mile away, but it’s still a fun journey to get there. Though I will say Han does what she did with Jeremiah and Conrad in ‘We'll Always Have Summer’ – ensuring the “love triangle” isn’t all it’s tangled up to be, not when Josh is so dull and wishy-washy compared to charismatic and sweetly charming Peter. If I have any other small complaints it’s probably about the slut-shaming and double-standard sexism that’s sparked in the last half of the book, but is left frustratingly unexplored (doubly annoying because Chris seems such a perfect character to get to know better at this point, when Lara Jean gets a taste of the sexist shaming Chris goes through on a daily basis).‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ is the first book in a duology, with second book ‘P.S. I Still Love You’ set for 2015 release. There’s no information about that second book, and I’m a little bit concerned about venturing into another contemporary YA finale of Han’s … but ‘To All The Boys’ does leave off on a bit of an emotional cliffhanger, not to mention Margot and Josh still have a story in them that could make for an interesting second instalment. I’m totally invested in the Song girls dramas now, so will definitely be coming back for more. ‘To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’ is just plain fun, a YA contemporary that’s good for the soul and had me up until 2AM to finish reading. Highly recommend this book that’s definitely a favourite of 2014 for me.4.5/5
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