To All the Boys Review: Lara Jean Ruined Rom-Coms

The Fake Dating Plot That Made Everyone Feel Things Again

I read this in one sitting on my bedroom floor and did not move for anything, not food, not my phone buzzing, nothing, because Lara Jean Covey’s hatbox of secret love letters had just been mailed out into the world without her permission and I needed to know exactly how bad it was going to get.

Lara Jean Is the Main Character YA Needed

Here’s what makes this book work when a hundred other “quirky girl writes her feelings down” premises don’t: Lara Jean is genuinely, specifically herself. She bakes when she’s anxious. She’s deeply loyal to her sisters in a way that never tips into martyrdom. She’s a homebody who’d rather rewatch a movie she loves than go to a party, and the book never treats that as a flaw to be fixed. Jenny Han writes her with so much interiority that you understand exactly why she writes letters instead of saying things out loud, and exactly why that’s not actually healthy even when it’s relatable. This isn’t a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or a blank-slate heroine. She’s a real teenage girl with a real inner life, and that’s rarer than it should be.

The Fake Dating Trope, Executed Almost Perfectly

Peter Kavinsky. I have to talk about Peter Kavinsky. The fake dating setup here is the platonic ideal of the trope: two people with believable, non-cartoonish reasons to need this arrangement, forced into proximity, slowly discovering the performance isn’t entirely a performance. What sells it is the specificity of their dynamic, the note-passing, the fake-dating “rules” they invent, the way Peter is charming without being a jerk who needs redeeming. He’s just a genuinely likable guy who happens to have some growing up to do, which is a different and honestly more satisfying shape than the broody bad boy YA usually reaches for. The chemistry is built on banter and small gestures rather than insta-love intensity, and it earns every bit of swoon it gets.

Where It Sags, Because Honesty Matters

I’d be lying if I said the pacing never dips. The middle stretch leans hard on repetitive school-hallway scenes and the same two or three social dynamics playing out again, and some of the supporting cast, particularly a few of the mean-girl-adjacent characters, feel thinner than the leads deserve. There’s also a subplot involving Lara Jean’s older sister Margot that gets set up with real weight and then resolves almost too neatly, like the book ran out of pages before it ran out of feelings to explore. It’s not a dealbreaker, but readers wanting a tightly plotted romance rather than a slower coming-of-age hangout book might feel the sag.

Why It Still Hits

What ultimately makes this book a classic of the genre isn’t the plot mechanics, it’s the tenderness. Han writes about family, particularly Lara Jean’s relationship with her dad and sisters after losing their mom, with a gentleness that never feels manipulative. It’s a book about being brave enough to be seen, wrapped in a fake dating premise so charming you forget you’re reading about grief and growth at all. The fandom’s obsession with this book and its Netflix adaptation isn’t hype for hype’s sake. It’s earned.