Everyone kept telling me the Netflix movie was "cute enough" and I didn't need to bother with the book. I almost believed them. Then I found myself at 11:30 on a Tuesday night, papers half-graded, red pen abandoned on the kitchen table, listening to שרון ליפקינד narrate Lara Jean's voice in Hebrew — and honestly? The movie crowd was wrong.
This is Jenny Han's P.S. I Still Love You in Hebrew translation, and I want to talk about what that does to the story. Because it does something.
When Lara Jean Speaks Hebrew, She Grows Up a Little
Here's what surprised me: the Hebrew narration strips away some of the breeziness that the English version leans on. Lara Jean's internal monologue — her overthinking, her romantic daydreaming, her constant measuring of what's real versus what she's imagined — hits differently in Hebrew. The syntax forces a certain directness. When she's spiraling about whether Peter really chose her or just defaulted back to her after Gen, the Hebrew phrasing doesn't let her hide behind American teenage verbal filler. She sounds more honest. More exposed.
שרון ליפקינד carries this well. The narration is steady, warm without being saccharine. She doesn't try to do dramatic voice shifts between characters — it's more of a tonal thing, a slight shift in register when Peter talks versus when John Ambrose McClaren shows up. That restraint actually works for this story, because Lara Jean is the filter for everything. We're trapped in her head. The narration should feel like one person's consciousness, and it does.
I should be honest here — I don't have enough data on ליפקינד's broader body of work to tell you how this compares to her other performances. What I can say is that at 10 hours and 24 minutes, she sustains a consistent emotional register without the energy dipping in the middle sections, which is where a lot of YA audiobooks lose me.
The Ski Trip, the Rumors, and Why This Book Is Smarter Than People Think
Let's talk about what Han is really doing in this installment. The ski trip — where rumors about Lara Jean and Peter spiral out — isn't just teen drama for drama's sake. It's Han writing about how women lose control of their own narratives. Lara Jean didn't do what people say she did, but it doesn't matter. The story about her takes on its own life. I teach sixteen-year-olds. I watch this happen in real time, every semester. The speed at which a rumor becomes "truth" in a high school hallway is genuinely terrifying, and Han captures that helplessness without turning it into an afterschool special.
And then there's John Ambrose McClaren. The boy from her past who represents the road not taken. Han sets up a genuine triangle here — not a cheap one where one option is obviously wrong, but one where both boys represent something real. Peter is the present, messy and complicated and sometimes disappointing. John Ambrose is nostalgia made flesh, the version of love that's easier because it hasn't been tested yet. This reminds me of what Hemingway said about the difference between what you want and what you actually need — except Han writes it for teenagers and does it without condescension.
My students would hate that I just compared Jenny Han to Hemingway. I don't care. She earned it here. I made a similarly unpopular comparison in my notes on Der Freund, where the emotional restraint reminded me more of Carver than anything shelved in contemporary fiction.
The Translation Question
I should note something practical: this is a Hebrew audiobook of an American YA novel. The cultural translation isn't perfect — references to American high school conventions (ski trips, school dances, the specific social hierarchy of a suburban Virginia school) sit a little oddly in Hebrew. Not badly. Just oddly. If you're listening in Hebrew as a second language, the vocabulary is accessible. Han writes clean, direct prose, and the translation by מיכל כהן preserves that. It's a good entry point for someone building Hebrew listening skills who wants something engaging but not linguistically overwhelming.
But if you're a native Hebrew speaker expecting the prose to feel natively Israeli — it won't. It's a translation, and translations carry their source language like a shadow. You feel the English underneath.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
If you loved the first book and want to hear Lara Jean actually wrestle with something harder than secret love letters, this is the payoff. If you're a parent trying to understand what your teenager is reading (or should be reading), this is smart YA that takes young women's emotional lives seriously. If you're coming to this cold, without the first book — don't. This is a sequel that assumes you're invested. It won't hold your hand.
Skip it if you need plot-driven momentum. This is a character study wrapped in a romance. Large stretches are Lara Jean baking and thinking. I found that calming. Denise, walking beside me on the lakefront while I listened, said I looked "annoyingly peaceful." So take that as you will.
The Grade I'd Write in the Margin
Solid B+. Not the strongest book in Han's trilogy — the first one has the advantage of surprise, and the premise is fresher. But this middle installment does the hard work of making Lara Jean a real person instead of a quirky concept. The Hebrew narration is clean and committed. Worth the ten hours, especially if you're listening at 1.0x. The prose deserves to be savored, even in translation.
