Diversify Yourself: Jenny Han creates a heart-felt coming of age novel

Serena Bettis • September 18, 2016

20160918_103051 — To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. Photo Credit: Serena Bettis

The first time I read To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, I absolutely hated it. I thought that Lara Jean, the main character, was way too whiny and babyish to be a sixteen-year-old and I disliked her so much that I couldn’t make it one hundred pages into the book. But alas, I had bought the book, and it was a pretty hardcover, so I had to keep it and live with the regret that I could have spent my money on something better. It’s a goal of mine, however, to read every book that I own, so I decided to give it another go; it has been about two years since I first picked it up, and I hoped that, like with many other occurrences in life, time would change my opinion of the book. Once I was able to get past my aggravation of Lara Jean, I’m happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I even went out right away to buy the sequel.

This book is the embodiment of one of my favorite tropes: girl likes one guy, another guy likes a different girl, and they both decided to fake-date to make the other people jealous, but instead, they both start to fall in love with each other. Lara Jean has had a crush on her neighbor and sister’s now-ex boyfriend for nearly as long as she can remember, and the most mortifying thing happens to her once the school year starts – the love letter she wrote him somehow got mailed to him, and now he wants to talk about it. Desperately wanting to avoid an awkward confrontation, she lies and says that she’s totally over him, in fact, she’s just started dating someone. In walks Peter, a boy she also used to have a crush on. Peter wants to make his ex-girlfriend understand that he is totally over her (even though Lara Jean is pretty positive he’s not), so he agrees to go out with Lara Jean for a while. Both of them start to learn more about the other, and each new quirk they find in the other makes them realize that what they used to think about the other was completely wrong. Watching Lara Jean go from wanting to “break up” with Peter right away to not wanting it to end is so cute it makes my heart squeal.

I still dislike Lara Jean a little bit, but she does get better further into the book, and I really loved the romance and character growth that happens when she’s forced to grow up more. The main thing that irked me was Lara Jean, but that’s actually the only aspect of the book I dislike. At first, she seems so immature, and not in a way of being obnoxious and doing stupid things, but in a lack-of-experience, still acts like a little girl kind of way. I especially hate how she calls her dad “Daddy” and her mom “Mommy”, even though I understand that the usage of the words could be the author’s attempt at making the characters more realistic, considering her mom died when she was young, so she would still call her “Mommy” in her mind, and she has a younger sister, so around her she’d still call her dad “Daddy”. She also thinks about and describes people in a very stereotypical way, labeling her peers as “cool kids”, “rebels”, or the “nice guy”. I did notice, however, that these things about her stopped annoying me the more I read, meaning that I either got more used to it, or her immaturity quietly goes away.

Not only is this a story about romance, but it’s a coming-of-age novel in a way that I wouldn’t expect. When her sister goes away to college in Scotland, Lara Jean has to figure out how her sister managed to take such good care of their little sister, their house, and their dad, all while balancing school work and a personal life. She slowly works to overcome her fear of driving, eventually learns how to make dinner for her family that doesn’t just consist of box macaroni-and-cheese, and even encourages her younger sister to grow up a little and start helping with other household chores. It’s only when her older sister comes back from college and tries to take over everything that Lara Jean truly realizes how much she’s grown up in a few short months. Seeing characters overcome their difficulties and really manage to make a good life for themselves is one of my favorite parts about reading a book.

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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a great story for high schoolers to read because it accurately depicts the fears and insecurities many people have about relationships that are more emotionally intense than anything they’ve ever known before. It shows a girl trying to get through life in high school and try new things, and letting go of her fears and misconceptions so that she can enjoy life a little more, which is something that every student can relate to as the go through the same journey.

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About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.