Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Responsibility, and Growing Up
Love and Fear
Social Structure, Reputation, and High School
Lies vs. Honesty
Summary
Analysis
The next morning, one of the all-school announcements is that the school is hosting a Model UN scrimmage this weekend. John Ambrose McClaren was on his middle school’s team, so Lara Jean wonders if he’s still involved. At lunch, she brings it up with Peter. He thinks it’s hilarious that she’s going to confront John Ambrose, but he insists he won’t go with her. She says she wasn’t going to invite him, which offends Peter—he accuses her of talking to other guys before they’ve even broken up, but he admits he’s impressed.
It's a sign of Lara Jean’s growing maturity that she decides to seek out John Ambrose on her own and find closure that way. In a way, this is an admission that Lara Jean’s letters didn’t actually do their job. If she wants to truly get over her crushes, she’s going to have to figure out how to do that in some other way. To Peter, though, this presents a bit of a challenge—will John Ambrose emerge as a threat, as Josh has?
Themes
Lara Jean kissed John Ambrose at a party in eighth grade, during a game of spin the bottle. She was thrilled until after the tiny peck of a kiss, and then she was disappointed. Lara Jean expected more—but maybe now she’ll get a chance, and maybe it’ll help her forget Peter.
Again, it’s significant that Lara Jean isn’t sitting down to write another goodbye letter to Peter that he’ll never read—she knows that in order to get over him, she needs to find new ways to deal with her difficult emotions.
Themes
