Dear To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,
I read you first when I was fourteen. We met through book reviews in lifestyle magazines I don’t read anymore and friends who knew I liked reading and romance. I thought you had the most beautiful cover I’d ever seen, from the way your cursive title is handwritten in Sharpie to how you capture sweet details like strung-up polaroids and the rose-bud printed comforter.
When I have a crush on someone, I avoid them like the plague, anxious that they’ll know my feelings by looking at me. It’s not that I tried to avoid you at first; I just decided that I would wait a little bit, and if I still wanted to read you, then I would.
When I began on page one, the last thing I expected was to fall in love (I can’t even fall asleep!) by the last line. Just like Lara Jean did in her letter to Peter, I’ll go into all the things I love about you:
Your characters are real. How am I supposed to believe that Lara Jean isn’t a real person when she always bakes in the red-and-white gingham apron that her grandmother bought from Korea, when she has the “I have nothing to wear” moment before having dinner with Peter’s family, when she refuses to acknowledge her jealousy over Peter canceling his plans with her for Gen? In addition, the supporting characters are just as believable. I only have one older brother, but reading you gave me the sisterly experience I’ve always dreamed about, and I’m so thankful to have found an older sister in Margot and a baby sister in Kitty. (And also, the part when Kitty makes Lara Jean perform their knee-sliding, running man, treadmilling dance for Peter? Gold.)
You “show and don’t tell” without using hoity toity vocabulary that no one understands. As someone who loves to write, you have taught me that concise sentences with simple yet strong words can still paint a clear picture and pack a punch. For example, when Lara Jean says on page 354, “Love is scary: it changes; it can go away,” even though there are no SAT words, I understand exactly what she’s saying.
Lara Jean. I’ve never related to a character so wholeheartedly before. I relate to Lara Jean because she daydreams as a way to imagine what she fears happening in real life. When Peter accuses Lara Jean of liking people who have moved away, who are taken, who she’ll never have a shot with because she is scared of falling in love, I felt that. I relate to Lara Jean because she is also on the quiet side, yet she thinks and feels deeply, and there’s a lot more to her than what meets the eye. This trait of hers was so familiar to me; sometimes I choose not to open up because I’m afraid others may not like what they see. I relate to Lara Jean because she is also Asian and understands the feeling of having to live up to someone else’s definition of what it means to be Asian. Lara Jean refusing to dress up as a non-Asian figure for Halloween because she believes other people will assume she’s an anime character reminds me of how American people assume I speak Chinese fluently because my parents are immigrants, but Chinese people expect that I understand no Chinese at all because I was born in America.
In your story, Lara Jean writes love letters when she is ready to let go and say goodbye to one of her intense crushes. This isn’t a goodbye letter to you— I will probably never get tired of rereading you, as evidenced by the crack in my copy’s binding between pages 120 and 121. After Lara Jean expresses her fear of love, she admits, “That’s part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared anymore.” I also don’t want to be scared anymore when it comes to love, when it comes to being vulnerable, and when it comes to what others think of me. As I said before, I read you for the first time the summer before eighth grade, and I looked up to Lara Jean as the kind of person I wanted to be when I got to high school. Now, I’m nineteen, a first year in college, and a couple years older than Lara Jean when Peter received her letter. I’ve grown up so much since then, and I’ve grown up with Lara Jean, and I don’t want to be scared anymore. This isn’t a goodbye letter to you; this is a goodbye letter to being afraid, and this is a love letter to the book that gave me the courage to let go of my fear.
Love,
Elizabeth
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