Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han: Review

Goodreads Summary: Lara Jean is having the best senior year. And there’s still so much to look forward to: a class trip to New York City, prom with her boyfriend Peter, Beach Week after graduation, and her dad’s wedding to Ms. Rothschild. Then she’ll be off to college with Peter, at a school close enough for her to come home and bake chocolate chip cookies on the weekends.

Life couldn’t be more perfect!

At least, that’s what Lara Jean thinks…until she gets some unexpected news.

Now the girl who dreads change must rethink all her plans—but when your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to?

 

Review:

“I guess that’s part of growing up, too–saying goodbye to the things you used to love.” 

Two years ago, Lara Jean watched her older sister, Margot, go through a painful breakup with her boyfriend because she was leaving to go to college. Now they’ve come full circle and Lara Jean is in the same position.

Lara Jean and Peter have been been in a blissful relationship for over a year, and they plan to keep it that way. With senior year drawing to a close, they’re ready to continue the next chapter of their lives by going to the neighborhood university, UVA, where they’ll be able to continue their relationship without curfews or parents, but still be close enough to pop over home if they want. But of course things don’t go as planned, and Lara Jean is forced to make the hardest decisions of her life regarding where the next four years of college and beyond will take her.

While still a fairly light contemporary, this book is the most serious and emotional in the series. Lara Jean’s relationship with Peter has been such an important thing in her life, but she’s suddenly forced to consider other things, and what is really the most practical, and the most important. I almost cried reading this book.

I think that this book is the most relatable in the series as well. Both of the first two books had the dreaded love triangle, which most teens probably can’t relate to. Instead, this book has Lara Jean struggling with something all high schoolers have to consider; what to do after high school and where to go to college.

The book was also filled with the nostalgia with ending the high school chapter of Lara Jean’s life. Even for people who are not in a relationship, leaving high school means leaving childhood friends and family, and placing yourself in a completely unfamiliar situation. The book examines these, including leaving Lara Jean’s oldest friend, Chris.

As always, I loved the situation with the sisters at home. I loved how Margot was really a mother figure and gave Lara Jean good advice on making the choice for college. It was bittersweet to see that the sisters would never live together again, but also beautiful in showing how they were family always and had their arguments and disagreements, but of course, at the end of the day loved each other.

There’s also the element of Lara Jean’s dad marrying their next door neighbor, Ms. Rothschild/Trina. It was definitely a fun part of the novel seeing the wedding preparations, and it was also a powerful part seeing how the girls adapted to seeing their dad marry again after their mom’s death so long ago.

Throughout the entire book, I honestly had no idea how it was going to end, right up to the last page. It was bittersweet, but really beautiful and fitting, and I loved it. If you are like me and scared to read this book because you loved the ending to PS I Still Love You so much, I recommend reading this one anyways because the ending was so satisfying.

4.5 out of 5 dusty pink stars

 

You can also read my review on Goodreads here.

Check out Always and Forever, Lara Jean on Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.