58 pages 1 hour read

Jenny Han

Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017

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Chapters 17-20

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17 Summary

Kitty and Lara Jean consider what their family dynamic would be if their father and Trina had a baby together. Kitty worries she wouldn’t be the youngest anymore and refers to Lara Jean as the prettiest; Lara Jean says there’s no way Kitty would be “nothing” as she’s the “wild Song girl. The mean one. The spiky one” (236). Kitty takes back her statement about Lara Jean being the prettiest and renames her the nicest. Lara Jean quietly continues to contemplate her father with a new baby.

The next morning, Lara Jean criticizes Peter’s lack of a beard, calling him a boy because he doesn’t do his own laundry or make lunches. She asks what he’d do if she got pregnant, and when he says that would be her decision, she feels happy. When he says “sure” he’d marry her, she calls him a boy again, and he retaliates that he would never want to be like his own father. The conversation picks back up after school, and Lara Jean reassures Peter that she doesn’t want to marry or have babies right now—but that they’d be safe because her dad gave her a birth-control kit. The discussion veers into their future plans, and Lara Jean finds herself pining for someone she may never know.