| Rant | To All The Boys I Loved Before

This post will contain mild spoilers for the books and movies, thread carefully if you’ve not seen the movie or read, at least, the first book.

So, I saw To All the Boys I Loved Before movie first. I knew the books, but I wasn’t particularly interested in getting into the world; however, after seeing the trailer, and the explosion the movie got online, I dove in.

This is one of those uncomplicated, coming of age, love stories. It’s a sweet rom com to make you wish you actually had a Peter Kavinsky writing notes to you.

I thought it was really sweet – and might or not, have seen it two or three times already – not only because of the romance, but because I could relate deeply to Lara Jean. Not that I’ve been writing love lever to my crushes, but I’m a reader with a romantic heart and it touched something deep in my soul.

Of course that after seeing the movie, which had such a good ending, such a finite ending that I couldn’t understand what was the necessity of another two books.

Once my curiosity is peeked, I cannot just ignore it. So… I got the ebooks and read them non-stop.  Seriously, I started on Saturday night and by Monday – roughly around the same time – I was finished with the three books.

You’d think that if someone read so much so quickly, it was because she was enjoying… Not exactly. I don’t want to say the books are horrible, because they are not, just they aren’t very good.

That’s being unfair, the plot is good, but the characters are bland. It’s not that they fall into clichés – which they do, but what are you expecting from a teen drama book -, it’s that don’t follow a coherent line.

I loved Lara Jean in the movie, I related to her love of books and her fantasies about the world, her trusting problems only made her more human. And she was so human, so cute with her smart mouth and clueless way of looking at things. It’s impossible to see the movie and not feel connect with her, she’s so well constructed.

However, in the book she’s a lot blander. She’s not cute and she’s constantly judging how people act, there’s actually a character that says that to her, I think. I don’t exactly know what I didn’t like about book Lara Jean, she’s just… She get mad about little things and then Peter needs to grovel to get his pardon. And then when she is right and she should be annoyed, Book-LJ ends up being the one apologizing to Peter.

WHAT???

Let’s take a moment to talk about PETER KAVINSKY who’s just my newest crush. But NOT ON THE BOOK.

Book-Peter is THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER. I swear to all the Gods I wanted to punch him every time he opened his mouth in the first two books. When a book depends heavily on the dialogue between two characters, there needs to be some descriptions to let the reader understand the change in the direction of a conversation, but the author often forgets those tiny bits of information so her characters – specially Peter – go from ‘’Hey. I love you. I’m happy’’ to ‘’I’m so fucking done with this’’ in the spam of two paragraphs.

These books could have been amazing, if only the writing had allowed these full of potential characters to grow, had allowed the reader to truly experience their relationships and their stories.

The only thing I will say is that, as always, relationships go deeper in the books, there’s more space for you to understand the family dynamic, although I will say I prefer Margo and Kitty on the movie, much less bitchy, I also found Josh/Lara Jean dynamic much better in the books. Even when I wanted to hit Josh, book readers, you know why, they had more interactions and you really get to know how, why and what made their friendship.

Will you guys kill me if I get to the life altering conclusion that I greatly prefer the movie to the book in this case?

Because I think I do, I saw the movie, read the books and saw the movie again, and all the little alterations the producers decided to make enriched the story, made the viewer feel even more for the characters.