P.S. I Still Love You — To All the Boys, Book 2

P.S. I Still Love You Review

Lara Jean and Peter are finally, officially together — which means the novel begins precisely where most love stories end, and has to figure out what comes next. What comes next, in Jenny Han’s hands, is both more interesting and more complicated than the simple pleasures of the first book’s fake-dating premise.

Reading Order

P.S. I Still Love You is the second book in the To All the Boys trilogy, following To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and preceding Always and Forever, Lara Jean. It should not be read independently of the first book.

The Love Triangle That Works

The reappearance of John Ambrose McClaren — who received one of Lara Jean’s letters and wrote back — is the novel’s central complication, and Han handles it with more care than the trope usually receives. John Ambrose is not a decoy or a cautionary tale. He is warm, attentive, genuinely interested in Lara Jean, and entirely plausible as an alternative. The triangle is real, which means Lara Jean’s eventual choice is meaningful rather than foregone.

Being in the Relationship

Where the first book was about the approach to love — the letters, the longing, the managed distance — this one is about the daily reality of being with someone. Lara Jean discovers that she is less practised at vulnerability than she thought. The insecurities that arise — around Genevieve, around Peter’s history, around what it means to be chosen and whether she can believe it — are rendered with the specific anxiety of a first real relationship.

Lara Jean Growing Up

The volunteer subplot at the retirement community, where Lara Jean meets Stormy — an elderly woman whose approach to life is the opposite of Lara Jean’s cautious interiority — is among Han’s finest pieces of characterisation across the trilogy.

A Different Kind of Sequel

Most romance sequels face a structural trap: once the central couple is together, where does the tension come from? Han’s answer is to make the book about the inside of a relationship rather than the pursuit of one, and that shift is what saves it from the sophomore slump. The first novel ran on longing, on the managed distance of letters and a fake-dating ruse; P.S. I Still Love You trades that for the messier, less glamorous reality of vulnerability — of having actually been chosen and not quite believing it, of comparing yourself to a partner’s past, of learning that wanting love and being able to receive it are different skills. The reintroduction of John Ambrose is the plot engine, but the real subject is Lara Jean’s slow, halting education in intimacy. It is a quieter, more interior book than its predecessor, and while that costs it some of the first book’s structural snap, it gains a psychological honesty about first relationships that the genre rarely attempts.

The Hot Tub Fallout

The novel’s sharpest conflict springs from a viral video: footage of Lara Jean and Peter in a hot tub on the ski trip resurfaces, and the rumor mill, fueled by Peter’s history with Genevieve, turns it into a scandal that follows Lara Jean through the halls of her school. Han uses this to explore something genuinely contemporary — the way digital cruelty amplifies ordinary teenage humiliation, how a private moment becomes public property, and how slut-shaming falls hardest on the girl. It is the book’s most uncomfortable thread, and while the Genevieve antagonism can feel borrowed from a more conventional mean-girl YA, the emotional fallout — Lara Jean’s confusion, her wounded pride, her uncertainty about whether Peter has truly chosen her — is rendered with real psychological honesty. It externalizes the book’s central anxiety: the terror of being vulnerable to someone who could hurt you.

Stormy and the World Beyond Romance

The Belleview retirement community is where the novel quietly does its best work. Stormy — glamorous, unapologetic, full of stories about a life lived boldly — becomes a foil and a kind of mentor to the cautious, interior Lara Jean, and the friendship gives the book a dimension beyond its romantic plot. (Han even ties Stormy into the love triangle in a satisfying way, revealing her connection to John Ambrose.) These scenes embody one of the trilogy’s quiet arguments: that a young woman’s life should be larger than which boy she chooses, that wisdom can come from unexpected places, and that learning to live fully is the real coming-of-age. It is characterization of unusual warmth for the genre, and it deepens Lara Jean into more than a romantic heroine.

The Choice That Divided Readers

P.S. I Still Love You builds to a genuine decision, and Lara Jean ultimately recommits to Peter — a choice that proved controversial, with a vocal contingent of readers firmly in Team John Ambrose. Han’s point, though, is not which boy is “better” but what the choosing reveals: Lara Jean’s return to Peter is framed as growth, the harder and more mature decision to do the real work of a relationship with the person she actually fell for rather than retreating to the safer, less complicated alternative. That the choice frustrates some readers is, in a sense, proof the triangle worked — both options were worthy enough that no ending could satisfy everyone. The decision is meaningful precisely because it costs something.

Jenny Han’s YA Touch

Underlying it all is Han’s distinctive gift: a tone of genuine sweetness that never tips into saccharine, a Korean American heroine whose specific family world (the motherless household, the baking, the close-knit sisters) is rendered with loving particularity, and an emotional intelligence about adolescence that adults can read without embarrassment. The To All the Boys trilogy became a phenomenon — adapted into a beloved Netflix film series that turned Lara Jean into a cultural touchstone — precisely because Han takes teenage feeling seriously. P.S. I Still Love You is the bridge of that trilogy, and it succeeds by deepening its heroine rather than simply repeating the first book’s charms.

Our rating: 4.3/5 — A YA sequel that avoids the sophomore slump by presenting a love triangle in which both options are genuinely worthy, demanding real emotional work from its protagonist.

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