“The farawayness of old feelings, like even when you try with all your might, you can barely make out his face when you close your eyes.”

Lara Jean is reflecting on an earlier crush on Josh, her older sister Margot’s long-distance boyfriend. Her reflection shows what a turbulent time adolescence is and how many dramatic changes adolescents go through over a period of months. It also shows the general fleetingness and ephemerality of crushes, no matter what age one is.

“She leans forward and puts her hand on my knee. With a meaningful look she says, ‘Just be easy with his heart is all I ask.’”

Peter’s mother is warning Lara to go easy on her son: a warning that might seem unfair to the reader at first, given how much more power and experience Peter seems to have. Still, one lesson that Lara Jean learns over the course of the novel is that she has more power and agency than she realizes, and she is capable of hurting, as well as being hurt.

“Oh no. This isn’t how it was supposed to go for them. They were supposed to get back together, like Peter and me.”

Lara Jean is surprised and upset that her older sister Margot has not had the same cheering encounter with her off-and-on boyfriend that she has just had with Peter. This is partly because she now feels constrained from sharing her happiness over Peter with Margot, and partly because she looks up to Margot and wants to follow in her footsteps. She must learn the difficult lesson that romantic love is one area in which everyone is on their own, and different couples can react differently to similar circumstances.