But this book intrigues me. It's written by a Korean author with a biracial Korean protagonist! Siblings and familial bond play an important part in the story! The protagonist writes the letter to help her move on! And even book reviewers who doesn't really review YA recommends it! I must check it out, of course. I don't have much hope starting out - like I said I don't really read YA after several bad runs - but I finished pleasantly surprised. This book exceeds even my wildest expectations: it's actually good and it doesn't have an annoying protagonist for once.
Lara Jean is a teenage girl and yes, she has crushes on boys as straight teenage girls wont to do, but she acknowledges that her crushes are shallow and pretty much not going to happen. She thinks about boys, but she thinks about her family too - her sisters and her father - and it's pretty clear that she puts them first before any boys. I like her relationship with both of her sisters. The camaraderie between them is something I find familiar, having a sister myself. However, I am a bit cautious when reading the first few pages, since in my experience with YA the first boy that the protagonist said she had a crush on will inevitably be the end-game pairing, so when I read that Lara Jean has a crush on her sister's (ex) boyfriend, I have to pause for a bit because I think that pretty much breaks some sort of Girl Code: never date your sister's ex. Especially if your sister may or may not have lingering feelings from him. I say to Lara Jean, "Lara Jean, no boy is worth hurting your sister, so I want you to think long and hard before you do anything, girl." And what I like about Lara Jean is that she understands.
The protagonist of the past YA book I read will almost definitely throw caution to the wind and start flirting with the guy immediately, but Lara Jean understands and she doesn't. She keeps her distance and resists. And that's probably the first time I smile and think about a YA protagonist: "I like you. You're smart." One of the other reasons I love this book is because it contains one of my favorite tropes of all time which is the Let's Pretend to Fake Date/Marriage Because You Are the Last Person I Will Fall in Love with and I Have to Impress/Make Jealous of this Person But Oh Noes, Now I'm Falling in Love with You For Real! trope. Any book with this trope, I devour it like a cat devours catnip. Of course, the caveat is that the relationship between the pretend lovers have to be written well and they have to have sizzling chemistry, which are all present in this book.
I like that the male lead also have flaws too; he's not as bookish as Lara Jean and normally I'm all for bookish guy/bookish girl pairing but something between them clicks in a way that's not really present with Lara Jean and Josh. It's obvious that the male lead, even though he's not "smart" in a way that Lara Jean is, is still a good, decent guy, despite the fact that the whole high school population thinks he's a total ladies' man, he's only ever had two (real) girlfriends and one he stays for four years and he obviously still care a lot about her. I'm tempted to give the book five-stars, but I don't like the ending because I think it's too abrupt and Lara Jean suddenly gets a case of stupid-itis which perpetrates the abrupt ending. Fortunately this is her only case of stupid-itis in the whole book and she recovers from it in the end, but alas that means I have to wait two weeks I can see where the story goes next.
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