I was supposed to be cleaning my apartment on a Sunday afternoon when I hit play on this one. Two hours later, I was cross-legged on the kitchen floor with a cold cup of coffee and earbuds in, completely checked out of adult responsibilities and checked into the romantic anxieties of a sixteen-year-old. That's the kind of book this is.
The Gist: Landa's Lara Jean is genuinely endearing and the story has that specific cozy quality — baking scenes, family dinners, the enormous ache of first love — but the two male love interests sound nearly identical, which undercuts the central tension of a love triangle book. Great weekend listen with one persistent flaw.
P.S. I Still Love You picks up right where To All the Boys I've Loved Before left off. Leonie Landa also narrated To All the Boys I've Loved Before, so if you're coming in cold on her voice, that's the one I'd start with — though fair warning, the ratings suggest this second installment lands better for most listeners. Lara Jean Song Covey is officially dating Peter Kavinsky — the fake relationship turned real — and everything should be perfect. Except nothing ever is when you're sixteen. A hot tub kiss gets filmed and circulated around school, her old crush John Ambrose McClaren resurfaces after receiving one of her secret love letters, and suddenly Lara Jean is caught between two boys who both seem like genuinely decent options. Jenny Han writes this love triangle without making it feel cheap. Lara Jean isn't playing games — she's genuinely confused, and you feel the weight of that confusion because Han grounds it in specific, small moments: volunteering together at a retirement home, a text message left on read, the way someone looks at you across a room and you can't quite decode what it means.
This is the German-language audiobook narrated by Leonie Landa, and it's an abridged version — worth knowing upfront. The pacing felt tight and the story didn't seem to have obvious holes, though I occasionally wondered if quieter subplots got trimmed that would have added texture.
Landa brings genuine warmth to Lara Jean's voice. There's a sweetness to her delivery that never tips into saccharine — she captures the way a slightly anxious teenager processes her world, the internal panic when the video spreads, the second-guessing of every feeling. During one particular stretch where Lara Jean tries to sort out what she feels about John Ambrose versus what she feels about Peter, Landa's reading slows just enough that you can hear Lara Jean thinking it through in real time. You feel the pause between heartbeats. That kind of pacing control separates a good narrator from someone just reading words off a page.
Here's the problem, though: Peter and John Ambrose sound nearly identical coming out of Landa's mouth. Same vocal register, same inflection patterns — and if you're not paying careful attention to context clues, you lose track of who's speaking. For a book where the central tension literally hinges on distinguishing between two love interests, on Lara Jean figuring out which boy makes her heart do the specific thing, having them be vocally interchangeable undercuts the stakes. I rewound more than once during dialogue-heavy scenes just to reorient myself. One listener described it bluntly: the similar male voices almost made them give up on the story entirely. I didn't go that far, but the frustration is real and legitimate.
If you've seen the Netflix movies, you'll have Noah Centineo's Peter and Jordan Fisher's John Ambrose already differentiated in your head, which makes the audiobook's vocal blurring land even harder by comparison.
So why did I keep listening? Because Landa's Lara Jean is genuinely endearing. Because the story has that specific cozy quality — baking scenes, family dinners, the enormous ache of first love — that made my cold coffee and dirty kitchen feel like the right setting for a few hours of escape. Jenny Han brings that same warmth to It's Not Summer Without You, which I ended up listening to on a similarly irresponsible Sunday. And because sometimes you just want to spend an afternoon in a world where the biggest crisis is choosing between two sweet boys who both write you letters.
Who Should Listen (And Who Should Skip)
Buy this if you already love Lara Jean and want to experience her story in German, even with an abridged listen and fuzzy male voices. Skip it if distinguishing the love interests by ear matters to you, or if you haven't read book one — this sequel assumes you know the setup and doesn't hold your hand.
At just under eight hours, it's an easy weekend binge. Landa carries the emotional heart well enough to make the romantic scenes land, but that one persistent flaw — the indistinguishable boys — keeps this from being the version of the story I'd point someone to first. Stream it through a subscription if you can, and keep your ears sharp during conversations. You'll need them.
