Okay, so this little sequel took everything that I liked in the first one and just increased it all. I was slightly bothered by the dearth of character depth beyond Lara Jean and her immediate family/Peter/Josh in the last book, but Han lets each of her characters grow roots in this one. The strength of this installment is that it explores how painful and strange it is when relationships and friendships change, grow, or wane. This starts with Lara Jean watching it happen between Margot and Josh, but then it is also explored in the relationships between Lara Jean and Josh, Lara Jean and Gen, Peter and Gen, and even Lara Jean and Peter. The fact that I can list all of these characters names off the top of my head is a testament to their depth and development. 
 While the first book was ultimately predictable, I found the plot of this one to be full of more twists and turns because of this character development. Lara Jean has changed since the start of the first book, but she also remains realistically naive. Lara Jean went from thinking that she was not planning on having sex to wondering if it was really all that bad if she had just in the course of her relationship with Peter, and hey, that's kind of how things have happened in my experience. PLUS: the discussions about sex in this book were feminist AF without being totally in your face and I loved EVERY. DAMN. SECOND. OF. IT. Sometimes I just stopped and pointed at the book and went, "Yeah! This!" The fact that a character can be fairly sex-positive without having had sex herself is even more of an accomplishment. 
 Another great moment was Lara Jean's brief interaction with her teacher (whom we briefly met in the first book) when she wonders if her teacher had nothing better to do than stalk teenagers' Instagrams over the break. TOO REAL. Am I this teacher? Probably at times. This is also Lara Jean not realizing that this is definitely considered a part of this teacher's job. It was an excellent moment, especially because Lara Jean doesn't immediately just divulge all of her secrets to this teacher. That's (frequently) not the way that it happens. Most of the time, teachers say that they are there for their students, and the students respond somewhat apathetically (though Lara Jean does seem somewhat comforted by this support, and that is what keeps me going). 
 UGH, I WANT THE LAST ONE.