Book Review: To All The Boys I Ve Loved Before

In the novel, The Silver Star, by Jeannette Walls, a conflicted mother, named Charlotte, struggles with taking care of her two kids named, Liz and Jean. Jean is a twelve year old girl who goes by the name Bean. She is very responsible and good at taking care of herself. Liz is fifteen years old and she takes care of Bean and herself. The girls try hard to figure out where to stay whenever their mother unexpectedly leaves for a couple days.

Josh gets in fights with his brother Jordan because he has to help him with his school work because he is out with his girlfriend Alexis “Miss Sweet Tea, Miss Bitter Tea”. Josh gets through the story with

The movie moves to Lara who is told to go to a dinner in her mother’s place because she

Jeanette was the unfortunate sibling that seemed to be preferable target to receive beatings and humiliations. She was bullied for being skinny, white, intelligent, and poor on the other hand, Brian and Lori were her guardians. While living in The LBJ Apartments she was jumped by four Mexican girls in an alley she takes to get home. The girls had envy and hatred towards Jeannette because she was intelligent in class. Furthermore, “The next day when I got to the alley, the Mexican girls were waiting for me. Before they could attack, Brain jumped out from behind a clump of sagebrush, waving a yucca branch… Just back off

He usually let her out on the streets alone when she was young and often did not teach her the traditional paternal love and guidance in life. She eventually used this childhood to foster her own happiness, making it as positive as possible by herself, and instead of hating her dad, she grew to love him. Although my cousin did not exactly have Jeannette’s problems, she grew to continue loving him, which is what Jeannette did for

2. Jeannette and her parents have a unique relationship throughout the book. As much as Jeanette loves and cherishes her parents, she also feels unloved by them at times. As Jeanette grows and becomes wiser, she realizes just how unsafe her life was as she was a child. Jeanette feels that her parents love the way they live, although she cannot help but pity them and try to help them to live better.

2. Background: Josh is Margot’s ex-boyfriend. She dumped him before she left for college which was in a whole other country. Peter is fake dating Laura because she wanted to make Josh think that she didn’t like him anymore.

Throughout her childhood, Jeannette is faced with instability. Her parents had a very unique style that could be classified as “hands off” parenting. For example, Rose tells Jeanette that “If you don’t want to sink you better learn to swim… That’s one lesson that every parent needs to teach their child” (Walls 137). Instead of growing up in a traditional house, Jeannette and her family constantly moved from town to town. When her mother got bored, or her father got in too many bar fights, Jeannette was forced to pick up her life and move to another small desert town. Due to her nomadic lifestyle, Jeannette refrained from establishing deep friendships amongst her school and

Her mother, Rose, was a free spirit and didn’t want to carry the responsibility of raising a family. Consequently, Jeannette and her siblings were forced to mature prematurely, navigating abuse

Because she was considered a small child, her siblings took extra care to make sure she was okay and that she did not grow up the way she did. Jeannette Walls often took it personally when she thought that she failed her as a big sister. Many times throughout her life “felt like I [she] was failing Maureen, like I [she] wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d [she had] made to her [Maureen] when I [she] held her on the way way home from the hospital after she was born.” (Walls 206). The confilct Maureen was facing, was external. She could not change the fact that her siblings looked after her like she was there own child. They would buy her presents, and try to protect her from the cruel, harsh world their parents put them in. Maureen older siblings made she was

While she is in the hospital, her mother does not stay with her. Instead she visits a few times and gives her oranges, seeming to be disappointed in the fact that it is an illness. At this point in the story, the reader can begin to feel sorry for young Jeanette. She is left all alone in the hospital while her mother is busy helping the church. Jeanette wants to be a missionary, just like in the stories her mom has read to her. In the beginning of the book, it appears that Jeanette’s mother does love her. However, it appears that she only loves her based on if she fulfills her expectations or not.

Margot is calm, serious girl who enjoys studying. She is the oldest daughter in the family. Anne and Margot have a few family. Anne and Margot have a few arguments during their time in the Annex but sometimes they get alone well. and talk about a lot of things. Still March 12,1944 Anne writes in her diary. Margot spends most of her time thinking about her looney sister Anne. Margot doesn’t play at

Because of this, she started to miss her friends and teachers at the Moss,’ especially her best friend Mandy, even though she was treated badly. She also started to worry about the new place that she was going because of her past experiences. Being with a better family was so new to her that it was hard to face reality that she actually had people who cared for her. Going

Marguerite and her brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother at three and four, so she had little experience with her mother, Vivian,

Jenny Han is an american author of young adult fiction geared towards high school teens who love romance and drama. Jenny Han is the author of the “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” series and “The Summer I Turned Pretty” series. She also is in production of the “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” movie. During her work, she earned a GoodReads Choice Awards nomination for best young adult fiction.