To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Oh wait. That's the end. Really? There's not another 5 pages of middling nothingness to tie up everything in a cute, scrapbook worthy bow? Just a sentence fragment? Um, okay then. I guess grammar skills aren't for everyone.

For the life of me, I can't figure out the why of this book. Why did Lara Jean even write those letters to begin with? Was her life so boring that....wait. Don't answer that And then why/how did she even have a couple of those addresses (like the kid from camp)? So not only did she write the letters, she addressed envelopes - including the return address. (Did she put stamps on them too?) On top of that why isn't she more concerned than she is that someone found those letters and MAILED them. Maybe she should have invested in a diary or journal or whatever instead of envelopes. I mean the girl lives to scrapbook, but never considers a pink, glittery diary with one of those silly little locks. There's a quick, minuscule explanation for how those pages ended up with the USPS, but it feels like the author went with it because it was easy and didn't particularly care about the how or even that the letters existed by the time we got to the end. Side note: Why doesn't this over-privileged teen see being obsessed with her sister's boyfriend as weird?

And then there's the main character - Lara Jean - herself. I had to keep reminding myself that she's supposed to be 16. Why? Because everytime she said/thought/dreamed anything she sounded like a whiney, spoiled, immature 12 year old. While I could empathize with the general premises like teen crushes and sibling rivalries, I could not sympathize with Lara Jean herself. I'm pretty sure 9 year old Kitty has a higher maturity level than her sister.

I'm starting to realize that a major reason I like dystopian YA is because stuff actually HAPPENS and the characters are required to react. (Until book 3 in a trilogy when the lead is reduced to crying all. the. time.) With this, Lara Jean learns nothing, she barely does anything and by the end not much has changed. Basically, NOTHING happens.

I should have just watched the Netflix movie.