To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Book Title: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Author: Jenny Han

Series: To All the Boys I've Loved Before #1

Date Started: October 5th 2018

Date Completed: October 16th 2018

Genres: Romance, Contemporary

Quality Rating: Two Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Two stars

Review:

To sum up: this book is sickly sweet. That should decide it for most people as to whether they want to read it or not. Having watched and (to my surprise) loved the film, I was up for reading the novel even though it's not a genre I usually enjoy. I'm glad that I gave it a chance, but it's proved to me yet again that fluffy romance just isn't for me.

I felt like there was so much weighing the story down; from unnecessary exposition or one-liners to massive distractions - am I the only person that feels like the whole situation works so much better without knowing what's inside the love letters? I have to admit that the book probably suffers from me watching the film first, and for that I'm kind of sorry. But I can't help but think how the structure is a lot more flimsy and concerned with useless pieces of information just to be cute.

I also found that I didn't get on with the characters as well as I had in the adaptation. Of course I didn't read this book in its entirety, but nearly 100 pages in and everyone's basically a caricature of themselves. Where the film felt like it was pushing to break so many stereotypes, the book just kind of fell into some of them. No one was evil like we've come to expect from American high school dramas, but no one was really fully there for me.

Basically, I feel like it lacks the quirks and sense of realness that allowed me to get on so well with its movie counterpart. I put a clear disclaimer that I'm not a massive fan of the genre; if cute YA contemporaries are your thing then I'm sure you'll enjoy it, but they're not mine and even the rom-com triumph of the film didn't make me want to see this one through to the end.