This Netflix Original follows hopeless romantic Lara Jean in the sequel to the hit movie To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. The first movie has Lara Jean’s younger sister sending out love letters Lara wrote to “all the boys she’s loved before.” This is a catalyst to our protagonist starting a fake relationship with the most unrealistically sweet LAX player, Peter Kavinsky, and eventually falling in real love.

In this sequel, another boy that Lara Jean wrote a letter to comes back into her life. This adds drama and confusion to her relationship with Peter, and life as a cute and quirky teen rom-com character.

We start by seeing Peter and Lara Jean in the honeymoon phase, but things get less idyllic as Lara Jean’s relationship fears begin to manifest. The role of “girlfriend” is new to her, and that not-knowing-what-to-do is terrifying. Her uncertainty is even more exacerbated when her middle school crush John Ambrose joins Lara Jean volunteering at the local retirement home. There’s definitely some unresolved feelings there, which Peter obviously isn’t a fan of. They end up breaking up to a very cheesy montage of Lara Jean singing a heartbreak song down the hallway of her high school. Her and John Ambrose kiss, but Lara Jean ends up deciding that she’s still in love with Peter and goes back to him.

Lara Jean is our protagonist, we get insight about her inner thoughts and life outside of love that we don’t get for any other character. At the beginning of the film, Lara Jean is in a fairytale relationship and is absolutely terrified of anything dismantling that fairytale. All she wants is to vibe and be in love as a teenager, which like, I get it. Her obstacles are Peter’s dumbassery, John Ambrose’s dreamy eyes, and her own insecurities. By the end, she ends up choosing Peter which is a bad choice but she seems a little more confident in her relationship ability.

There are tons of flashbacks in this movie. When she’s reading the letter she wrote to John Ambrose, we see young versions of both of them running around in some fantastical version of middle school. This serves to develop their relationship, because we’ve already had a full movie to develop her relationship with Peter.

There’s also contrast developed between the two relationships. Right after Peter messes up and is late to a date or something, John Ambrose does something extraordinarily lovely. This makes it feel like John Ambrose is the natural and good choice. Which makes it a little funny that Peter is chosen but whatever!

The entire movie has this golden/teal filter over it, which is a little ugly. But I think it does serve the purpose of making it feel really idyllic and nice. The filter makes every color feel like it was kind of colored in, which highlights how nice it would be to have a relationship with a boy in theory. The sets also contribute to this. The retirement home is decorated in these beautiful little stars during John Ambrose and Lara Jean’s kiss, and Lara Jean’s room really develops her personality.

My thoughts on this movie are very contradictory. Like, is it a good movie? No. It’s very basic and the ending is dumb and it’s not super well made. Do I enjoy thinking about love like it’s real and pretending that a boy will not be awful to me? Yeah! So in that arena, it’s definitely successful. If you want to cry because you’re thinking about the fact that you’ll never be in a happy relationship, I recommend this movie.