To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Fiction | Novel | YA

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Chapters 54-58

Chapter 54 Summary

Lucas waits for Lara Jean at her locker to tell her that Genevieve broke up with her boyfriend over the weekend, and he saw Peter leaving her house the night before. Lara Jean is not all that shocked because she’s been waiting for this moment. Lucas warns her that this means Genevieve will try to get Peter back, and Lara Jean shouldn’t let that happen. In class, Lara Jean passes a note to Peter that tells him about Josh’s kiss. Peter seems angry and wants to say something to Josh about kissing his girlfriend. Lara Jean makes him promise not to, but she feels some validation from Peter’s jealousy.

Chapter 55 Summary

Josh is waiting for Lara Jean outside her house when she gets home. He wants to talk about the kiss and tells her he should be the one to tell Margot since the kiss was his fault. Lara Jean makes him promise not to tell Margot, but Josh is clearly feeling guilty and confused. He admits to Lara Jean that he hasn’t stopped thinking about her since he first read the letter. He tells her about a moment a couple of years ago, before he got together with Margot, when he was walking with Lara Jean, and he had this overwhelming desire to find out what it would feel like to kiss her. Lara Jean says she’s sorry that he got the letter—he was never supposed to and this issue between them was never supposed happen. Josh suggests that maybe getting the letter is fate and that he and Lara Jean are meant to be together. Lara Jean automatically responds in the negative and begins to realize that perhaps she never loved him.

Chapter 56 Summary

Lara Jean meets Peter alone in the weight room. She tells him they need to break up because, on her end, things are resolved with Josh, and her sister will be home soon. Peter reluctantly agrees but reminds Lara Jean about the ski trip. He tells her to let the ski trip be their final event together, so she takes the contract back and agrees to keep the façade up for just a little while longer. She doesn’t want to be there to watch him reunite with Genevieve, but she also can’t bear the thought of saying no to him.

Chapter 57 Summary

Lara Jean gets the idea to drop in on the school’s Model UN scrimmage. She remembers that John Ambrose McClaren used to do Model UN. If he still does, he might be there, and she can see what he’s like now. She recalls the time she kissed John during spin-the-bottle at a party in the eighth grade. She had expected more from the kiss because of her crush, but now she thinks she may have an opportunity to get over Peter.

Chapter 58 Summary

Lara Jean gets roped into doing page work at the Model UN scrimmage, where she sees John Ambrose McClaren. He is exactly as she imagined he would be. She takes a note from him as one of her page duties and says a quick hello. He doesn’t register her at first, but as she walks away, he tries to call her name. Lara Jean is thrilled he recognizes her. Peter texts her to find out if she’s spotted John, but Lara Jean ignores it for now, happy to have something joyful for herself.

Chapters 54-58 Analysis

Lara Jean is figuring out how to remedy her friendship with Josh and suppress her feelings for Peter. When Josh tries to talk to her about the kiss, she finally gives the conversation a chance. The revelation that Josh did in fact think about her romantically before Margot is heart-breaking—all this time, Lara Jean’s unrequited love story could have ended so differently. Had Lara Jean been honest from the very beginning, she may have been the one in a relationship with Josh instead of Margot. When it finally sinks in, Lara Jean rejects it; she is so against the idea of her and Josh now that she almost wonders if she ever truly loved him in the first place. Herein lies one of Lara Jean’s biggest issues: She lives in her fantasies instead of reality. She spent years wondering about her and Josh instead of trying to find out if she and Josh were a real possibility. Here, she is again repeating her mistakes because her real-time feelings for Peter are based on a make-believe, faked relationship. She thinks that Peter still loves Genevieve in the same way that she thought Josh loved Margot all along. She finds herself in almost the identical situation, but with Peter, it would be so much easier to tell the truth because it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

The conversation with Josh is a long time coming and highlights another flaw Han wants the reader to see. All this time, Lara Jean considered only herself and, occasionally, Margot’s feelings. But it is true that Josh and Lara Jean were friends until he received her love letter and it turned his world upside down. Lara Jean must learn that her actions do have a ripple effect—because she didn’t want to have the difficult conversation with Josh, Josh has spent months suffering on his own. In the span of a few weeks, Josh lost his girlfriend, his best friend, and his surrogate family, all because Lara Jean couldn’t confront her own feelings. Then again, if Lara Jean did open herself to the conversation the first time Josh confronted her about the letter, she might not have really understood her feelings and desires. In a way, going through the motions of being in a relationship with Peter has taught Lara Jean what she does and does not want for herself.

Chapter 58 demonstrates a more positive mindset Lara Jean is trying to adopt for her own growth. She decides to try to meet with John Ambrose McClaren again. With John, there are no known emotional ties, baggage, and lies. Lara Jean doesn’t necessarily want anything to happen between her and John, but she wants to practice dating like normal, or developing crushes on boys in ways that don’t drag everyone she loves into a lie. Lara Jean tries to take a healthier level of control over her life, but she is still hiding her real feelings from Peter. Because the reader has already been through this journey with Josh, Han implies that the feelings between Lara Jean and Peter are not over yet, and the more Lara Jean tries to hide them, the harder things will get as the book moves to its conclusion.