P.S. I Still Love You: Loved the Book, Meh on the Movie

It’s time for another sequel review! This time I’ll be looking at P.S. I Still Love You, the sequel to the adorable Netflix hit, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Naturally, there will be SPOILERS.

First off, let me just say that these movies were books first, and the books are to die for. There are three books—the above-mention two, and then the conclusion: Always and Forever, Lara Jean.

I love these books, even though nothing much happens in them. That’s right—there’s a whole lot of not-that-exciting stuff in these books—fairly normal interactions and snippets of scenes between Lara Jean (LJ) and her boyfriend (Peter), LJ and her sisters and dad, LJ and her friends. There are no dragons to slay, no kingdoms to save, no epic “When the newly-orphaned princess learns that her fiancé is actually the underworld’s prince in disguise, she has to ignite the magic in her blood or all is lost” kind of schemes. The sweetness of these books is in their normalcy—how warm and snuggly and happy they make me feel about low-concept things like your boyfriend putting a note in your locker or painting nails with your friend.

So those are my feelings about the books in general. Now let’s get into the plotlines of books one and two and discuss what happened when they got turned into movies.

As anyone who’s read the Netflix tagline knows, in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean’s secret love letters get sent to five boys she’s liked. To keep her current crush from knowing she likes him, she fake-dates Peter K, another letter recipient and Mr. Popular of their high school. Naturally, by the end of the book, they’ve figured out they like each other for real. What those who have only seen the movie don’t know is that the book ends with a cliffhanger—LJ starting a letter entitled “Dear Peter” to hopefully get back together with him after their breakup.

P.S. I Still Love You picks up right where the last book leaves off, but it has a harder challenge. Where To All The Boys had a pretty clear premise—fake-dating until they decide they want to date for real—P.S. tackles what it’s like to be in a real relationship with a real person’s insecurities and flaws. Through John Ambrose McClaren, it also explores the idea of what could have been vs. what is. This book meanders. It’s sweet and fun, and it contains more ideas than the first book. It’s enjoyable as a journey, but hard to turn into a movie.

And that’s where we come to the movie itself. While the To All the Boys movie followed the book closely, P.S. detours heavily. While I see the need for detour given the wandering nature of the book, I was overall more disappointed than happy with the result, and here’s why: the themes that make the book poignant were watered down or gone all together. The result was a generic chick flick where problems felt contrived and everything worked out perfectly with fairly minimal effort on the part of the characters. Did I still enjoy the movie? Sure. Do I feel a desire to rewatch it? Not really.

Important Changes Between the Book and the Movie That I Want to Rant About:

John Ambrose doesn’t come back into the picture until halfway through the book, and the first time they see each other is the time capsule party. Lara Jean doesn’t see him very often after that (she does occasionally see him at Belleview because he’s Stormy’s grandson—fun, right?). She’s friendly when she sees him, and you can tell she still likes him and wonders what would have been, but it’s not like in the movie where I felt like LJ was emotionally cheating on Peter pretty much from the minute she reconnected with John

Another issue: In the movie, John is perfect. All he does is give her dimpled smiles and regale her with piano playing and bring up cute memories hinting that he’s always liked her. However, he’s also flat as a pancake. No shots at Jordan Fisher—he played John Ambrose in the cutest way possible—but the character seemed a little too perfect. This could have led to some interesting ideas about how the grass is always greener and it’s easier to see the flaws in your own relationship and assume that if you were in a relationship with someone else, everything would be perfect, but the movie skates right over this and leaves us wondering why in the world LJ didn’t choose John. Even I’m wondering that, and I’m Team Peter!

On that note, Peter felt sidelined compared to John (which didn’t happen in the book), and when he was shown, it was often in the context of how well he didn’t fit with LJ, where John was portrayed as the perfect match. So why did LJ choose Peter in the end? All the way through the book, we see Peter’s cute side and how well he does fit with and love LJ (despite the mistakes he certainly makes). Then, to quote LJ as she cites Peter’s winning qualities, she loves his “boyish confidence, his sunny outlook on life, the way he is so kind to Kitty. The way my heart flips over every time I see his car pull up in front of my house.” That reflection happens right near the end, after Peter returns the necklace he took back during their breakup and after he tells LJ (in front of John) he’s going to win her back. Lara Jean has reasons she chooses Peter in the end. In the movie, we only know that when she kisses John, she wishes he were someone else

Almost done but I can’t not mention the crux of the book—Lara Jean’s insecurity about her relationship with Peter, especially in context of his past relationship with Gen. In the movie, her insecurity mostly rises from her imagination, not real things Peter is doing, and so her outburst seems out of nowhere. In the book, we see that Peter is spending a lot of time with Gen. He brings her to the time capsule party, and he blows off an important lacrosse game to be with her. In the movie, these things get hinted at, but not enough that LJ’s outburst over how Peter is always choosing Gen made sense. The point of the book is that LJ is becoming petty and evermore insecure in her relationship and that this is tied to Gen’s relationship with Peter. Her insecurity builds until LJ and Peter break up. Contrast this to the buildup in the movie, where we see a lot of LJ and John being cute, we see LJ not feeling like she fits with Peter and wishing he weren’t so popular, we see a five seconds of Gen-related drama, and then boom! LJ and Peter broken up. And just as quickly, they’re back together and the movie ends. No real problem needing no real solution.

Finally, and on that note, we have the handling of Gen. The high point of the movie is having Gen come to the treehouse, explain that she hid the friendship bracelet because she didn’t want to admit how much LJ used to mean to her, tell LJ she just wanted Peter’s advice because her parents are getting split up, and then (the kicker) tell LJ that Peter is still in love with LJ and he tells her so himself. How nice of Gen to have a change of heart about Lara Jean and wrap up all the answers to her problems with a sparkly pink bow. In the book, this isn’t how it goes down at all. LJ actually ends the book with bad blood still between her and Gen, at least in Gen’s eyes. Lara Jean still has her moment of inspiration about jung, but when afterwards she asks Gen if they can be friends again, Gen disdainfully tells her to grow up. The book shows that sometimes, things can’t be fixed. Some rifts aren’t ready to be healed. The only thing you can do is actively move forward, take risks, and do the best you can. To that end, the person LJ invites to the treehouse isn’t Gen but Peter, and she does it to tell him what she’s learned about Gen and because she wants to fix things with Peter. She takes an active role in getting Peter back rather than having him magically show up at just the right moment. It’s a very real moment, and that’s what I love about P.S. I Still Love You—it makes the real mistakes and wanderings and could-have-beens of life take on meaning. I wish the movie hadn’t lost this, but hopefully seeing the movie will inspire people to read the book and get a taste of its realness for themselves.