To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Fiction | Novel | YA

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Chapters 13-17

Chapter 13 Summary

Lara Jean is sad to discover that her feelings for Josh have not subsided, even though she has tried to suppress them over the years. Lara Jean can’t help her feelings and needs an outlet for them. She decides to write a letter addressed to Josh that she’ll keep safe in her diary. She doesn’t put it away yet because she senses she’ll need to write more.

Chapter 14 Summary

Kitty is still not speaking to Lara Jean, as she’s angry about Lara Jean nearly revealed Kitty’s crush to Josh. Josh texts Lara Jean to go out bike riding, but Lara Jean tries to avoid it by telling him she needs to help her father with chores. Lara Jean likes Josh’s new dependency on her. Yet, Lara Jean knows she must tread this new dynamic carefully because Josh is off limits.

Chapter 15 Summary

The first day of school arrives, and one of Lara Jean’s new responsibilities with Margot gone is to get the family ready. She makes Kitty a nice pancake breakfast and a lunch of her favorite things, but Kitty still rejects her. Lara Jean is excited school and doesn’t want Kitty’s anger to shadow the excitement of new beginnings. Lara Jean meets up with Josh, who drives her to school. They discuss how ferociously Kitty can nurse a grudge and joke about how much better Margot is at being a big sister.

Chapter 16 Summary

In gym class, Lara Jean and Chris stroll around the track, and Lara Jean can see that Peter Kavinsky is looking over at her. At first, she thinks she’s imagining it, but then he comes over and asks to talk. He tells her that he doesn’t have an STD and that he’s sorry he stole her first kiss. At first, Lara Jean has no idea what he’s talking about. He tells her he received a letter from her outlining his flaws, and Lara Jean is shocked. Somehow, a private letter Lara Jean wrote years ago was mailed to Peter Kavinsky’s house, and now he knows all Lara Jean’s deeply private and personal thoughts about him.

At first, Kavinsky seems angry, but he tries to laugh it off as Lara Jean gets more upset and embarrassed. She tells him she wrote the letter way back in middle school, and she grabs the letter from him and runs off to the girl’s locker room. The letter is long and personal; in it, Lara Jean confesses her love for Peter even though she thinks he is full of himself. She accuses him of stealing her first kiss because it was in that kiss where she first started to love him. She tells him how painful it is to watch him kiss Genevieve each day, and how she feels she wasted seventh and eighth grade on him. The letter is obviously from a time when Lara Jean felt deeply for Peter, but it was also a long time ago.

Chapter 17 Summary

Lara Jean recalls her first kiss. She and Peter had been hanging out at their first unsupervised boy-girl party in the seventh grade. She found herself alone with Kavinsky, and he complimented the smell of her hair, then surprised her with a kiss.

It occurs to Lara Jean that if Peter was able to receive her letter, then maybe someone has sent all her secret letters out into the world. She has a letter for John Ambrose McClaren, Kenny from camp, Lucas Krapf, and Josh. Lara Jean runs all the way from school to her house to check her hatbox, where she expects to see her hidden letters. The box is missing, and Lara Jean feels ruined. Her first instinct is to call Margot, but she decides not to add stress on Margot and tries to calm down with ice cream instead.

Chapters 13-17 Analysis

Conflict brews between Lara Jean and Kitty. Kitty stays angry with Lara Jean for very nearly betraying her to Josh. Lara Jean tries to fix things with Kitty, but it seems the damage is already done. This conflict highlights the differences in personality between the sisters: Margot is level-headed, Lara Jean is dreamy, and Kitty can be ferocious. While Lara Jean can’t stay angry for long, Kitty nurses her grudges.

Lara Jean is hopeful about her junior year and thinks positively about the first day of school. Ironically, her hopeful outlook is shattered when Peter confronts her about a letter he received from her. Lara Jean has been writing private and personal letters to the boys she’s had feelings for, but without any intention of sending them. Her coping strategy for love lost is letter-writing, as though it were a diary entry. The things she wrote about Peter were never truths she would have said to him directly. Lara Jean is humiliated by the exchange, but her real problem is Josh. Han keeps the reader in suspense with this major turning point in the plot: The reader knows that Lara Jean has written letters to Josh, but Chapter 17 only reveals Peter as a recipient. With this plot twist, Lara Jean’s lies have caught up to her, and her life goes from keeping a difficult secret to the fear that her ability to contain her secrets is completely gone.

On the other hand, this plot twist offers Lara Jean an interesting opportunity: To be totally, completely honest about her feelings. Lara Jean keeps so much inside and confides so little in others. She doesn’t have many friends, and she has to be careful how much she reveals to her sisters. Lara Jean characterizes herself as good at lying, but now she’ll have to face up to at least some of these lies. Even though Lara Jean can’t see it, Han has built up the plot development to suggest that the revelation of her private letters to the world might just free Lara Jean, even if it is painful.

Han also uses this new plot development to reveal new characterizations of Peter Kavinsky. For all his popularity and confidence, Kavinsky is notably rattled by what Lara Jean said in the letter; he’s quiet but angry about her judgments of him. As Lara Jean starts to get upset, Kavinsky shows kindness and even a sense of humor about the letter. It is understandably disturbing to receive a letter such as the one Peter received, but he doesn’t berate Lara Jean about it or to make her feel bad.