Start Jenny Han with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before if the idea of private feelings becoming public makes you curious. Choose The Summer I Turned Pretty if you want to follow an attraction complicated by a shared summer history. Choose Burn for Burn, written with Siobhan Vivian, if your first interest is a secret revenge alliance rather than a primarily romantic starting point. These are separate trilogies, so you can choose the world that interests you and then read its three books in sequence.
The useful distinction is between choosing a series and choosing a volume. You do not need to finish Belly’s books before meeting Lara Jean. Within either trilogy, however, starting with the first novel lets you encounter the characters before later descriptions reveal changes in their relationships. This guide keeps the main premises brief and avoids naming final romantic outcomes. It also separates Han’s younger-reader books from her young adult fiction: an author name does not make every title the same reading experience.
The three reading routes at a glance
For Lara Jean, follow the order shown in the publisher’s three-novel collection:
- To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
- P.S. I Still Love You
- Always and Forever, Lara Jean
For Belly, the complete Summer trilogy runs:
- The Summer I Turned Pretty
- It’s Not Summer Without You
- We’ll Always Have Summer
For the trilogy coauthored with Siobhan Vivian, read:
- Burn for Burn
- Fire with Fire
- Ashes to Ashes
The official German publisher’s series page also explicitly numbers those three Burn for Burn books. Keep the two authors together when searching this series; it is a collaboration, not three Jenny Han solo novels. The original English titles above are identifiers. A translated title can look quite different, and this guide does not presume that every book has an edition in every language.
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Lara Jean: start with feelings that escape their hiding place
The premise of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is wonderfully direct: Lara Jean’s private love letters reach their recipients. That makes the first novel an inviting entry if you enjoy the gap between what someone can admit on paper and what she can say to another person. The attraction of the setup is exposure. A feeling can be safely organized while it belongs only to its writer; another person’s response makes it less controllable.
For a reader deciding between Han’s two better-known romantic series, this is a useful difference. Lara Jean’s opening question is not simply which person she likes. It is what happens when private versions of herself are encountered by people who were never meant to read them. You may prefer this route if embarrassment, imagined conversations and the possibility of being understood interest you as much as a first kiss. That is a reading preference drawn from the premise, rather than a promise about every scene in the novel.
Start at volume one even if a later cover or title looks more appealing. A sequel can show you a relationship after earlier decisions have changed it. Reading forward lets those decisions keep their uncertainty. You can wonder what a person means without already having the later book’s description in your head. It also gives the trilogy room to become more than a single high-concept situation: the same young person’s choices can acquire a history.
The opening of Lara Jean’s first novel moves from the family living room into her imagined Paris trip. That small shift offers a particular reason to begin with her prose voice: a private wish immediately meets other people’s ideas about who might share it. The attraction is not only the later arrival of a letter in someone else’s hands. It is also hearing how she imagines a life beyond the room while still responding to the household around her. A reader drawn to that mixture of imagination and family presence has a concrete reason to investigate this first volume.
Two published openings put family beside attraction
The authorized opening on the first Lara Jean novel’s publisher page introduces Josh through several family members’ responses to him. That gives you a concrete way to try the narrative voice before committing to a trilogy. Notice how the same person can mean different things within a household. Someone who might matter romantically is also encountered through other people’s affection, habits and expectations. You do not need to know the eventual couple to find that arrangement interesting.
Try a small reading experiment with that opening: ask whose opinion you are hearing in a sentence, and whether Lara Jean agrees with it, reports it affectionately or lets it complicate her own response. This is about attending to the available sample, not predicting the entire novel from a few pages. If you enjoy that movement between a private reaction and a family view, it is a more specific reason to continue than simply wanting a popular teen romance.
The posted opening of P.S. I Still Love You begins around a family New Year’s visit while Lara Jean thinks about Peter. Save that sequel sample until after the first novel if you want to protect changes in the relationship. Its useful contrast is between personal romantic anticipation and a gathering whose routines continue around it. Consider whether you like a love story to occupy a world already full of other attachments, rather than suspending everything until a couple has spoken.
You can use these two samples differently. The first helps you decide whether to start. The second, encountered in sequence, lets you notice how your familiarity with the protagonist affects what you hear. Neither sample establishes the content, tone or resolution of every later chapter. Their value is more immediate: you can try the prose itself and decide whether this particular perspective makes you want another page.
Why P.S. and Always and Forever belong after the first book
P.S. I Still Love You carries the publisher’s book-two label; Always and Forever, Lara Jean carries book three. Both linked records also identify a screen tie-in paperback presentation. The cover connection and the prose volume perform different jobs: the tie-in identifies an edition’s presentation, while the numbered book label places it after Lara Jean’s first novel. To continue her prose story, request P.S. next and Always and Forever afterward; the graphic retelling belongs to a separate format choice.
The reading pleasure here can include continuity itself. When you remain with one protagonist, an earlier uncertainty can become the background against which a later choice matters. You remember what she hoped for before she had to deal with another person’s reaction. Skipping straight to a volume with a title you recognize can still tell you events, but it removes some of that personal memory. Following the sequence is a way of letting the protagonist’s changing perspective accumulate.
Our broader guide to romance series reading order explains the difference between continuing arcs and separate entry points. With Lara Jean, the practical answer is straightforward: keep the numbered novels together. Han’s other series can wait until you want a different cast and a fresh beginning.
Belly: choose the summer history before choosing a side
The Summer collection description introduces Belly and the brothers Conrad and Jeremiah through summers at Cousins Beach. That shared past is a different invitation from Lara Jean’s letters. Instead of asking how a hidden feeling changes when it becomes visible, you can begin with the appeal of people whose place in one another’s lives already has a history. A familiar setting can hold both comfort and the wish to be seen differently.
Choose this route if you like a recurring place to carry emotional expectations. Returning somewhere can invite comparison: who you were on an earlier visit, who you hoped to become, and what other people still assume about you. Those are useful questions to bring to the opening, rather than a summary of unverified scenes. The coastal location is a reason to investigate the series, but the romantic decision is part of the premise too. A beach cover alone would not tell you that.
The first book gives you the initial encounter with this version of Belly’s world. The second and third titles then belong to the same developing sequence. For a first read, do not treat them as three independent summer romances that can be shuffled according to weather or vacation plans. Choosing the first is not a vote for a particular romantic outcome. It is a chance to learn why the people and their shared surroundings matter before judging their later decisions.
If you want to read alongside a friend, agree whether the conversation is about your current place in the books or about a screen version you both know. Those can produce very different discussions. One reader may want to speculate while another assumes an event is common knowledge. A simple agreement about the last completed chapter preserves the pleasure of uncertainty without preventing you from having strong opinions.
A love triangle is a reason to choose carefully
The publisher presents Belly’s romantic problem as a choice involving two brothers. If that kind of divided attachment is exactly what you enjoy, it can make the Summer trilogy your clearest starting point. If you find prolonged uncertainty about partners frustrating, recognize that preference before buying a set. You do not have to dislike an author’s writing to decide that a particular central question is not the one you want to spend time with.
Our guide to love triangles and why-choose romance helps distinguish different relationship promises. Here the useful point is specific: do not turn the presence of several possible attractions into an assumption about the final relationship structure. Read the publisher’s framing, and decide whether that invitation appeals to you. This guide does not disclose whom anyone ultimately chooses.
You can also enjoy the question without turning reading into a competition between characters. Try noticing what different connections ask the protagonist to understand about herself. Is your interest in familiarity, the excitement of a changed perception, or the tension between affection and expectation? These are ways to articulate your own response. They do not require a ranking that another reader must share.
Burn for Burn: a separate route through a shared secret
The first Burn for Burn novel introduces Kat, Lillia and Mary through a revenge alliance on Jar Island. This is the essential distinction when choosing it beside Lara Jean or Belly: begin because you want to follow the alliance, secrecy and consequences, not because the author name guarantees another version of the same romantic premise. Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian share authorship of all three novels.
An alliance creates a different reading question from an individual crush. People can agree on an action while carrying different reasons for wanting it. As a reader, you may enjoy watching the difference between a shared plan and a shared understanding. That is why this route can suit someone whose curiosity turns toward trust, group dynamics and what people feel entitled to do after being hurt. It should not be sold to you as a light romantic equivalent simply because its setting includes an island.
Read Burn for Burn, then Fire with Fire, then Ashes to Ashes. The publisher calls Fire with Fire book two and describes Ashes to Ashes as the conclusion. Later descriptions can reveal consequences from earlier volumes, so looking up every synopsis before starting may tell you more than you wanted. Checking the order does not require reading the plot summary of the ending.
Shug and Clara Lee are different reading invitations
Shug introduces twelve-year-old Annemarie and the upheaval of growing up. Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream is a children’s book whose premise includes a pageant ambition. Neither belongs between the numbered novels above. They are separate choices, not missing volumes that need to be inserted to make a trilogy understandable.
That distinction matters particularly when you discover an author through romantic screen adaptations and then search every title bearing her name. Younger-reader fiction can offer a different kind of closeness: the significance of a school transition, the wish to belong, or the challenge of doing something in public. A smaller-scale concern is not an incomplete version of an adult romantic plot. It asks the reader to take a different stage of life seriously on its own terms.
For a gift, start with the recipient rather than the most recognizable cover. Ask whether they want a teenage relationship story, a younger protagonist’s growing pains, or a shorter children’s reading experience. Publisher categories and samples are useful starting points; they do not replace knowing an individual reader’s interests and boundaries. There is no need to make a child work through a famous trilogy before meeting another protagonist, or to give an adult romance reader a children’s title without explaining the difference.
Collections and adaptations do not add a fourth prose novel
A boxed set can place existing books together, while a special edition can change packaging or include additional material. Neither label by itself means the main sequence has acquired another full novel. The Lara Jean keepsake collection names the same three novels listed above. Check its contents before deciding that a new catalog entry is a continuation you have missed.
The publisher also has a separate graphic novel route for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, credited to Han with an adapter and illustrators. Choose that format because you want a visual telling, rather than counting it as the fourth prose volume. If you want to compare versions, read one complete version first. That gives you something to notice about how a different medium communicates, instead of using it only to hunt for matching scenes.
My True Love Gave to Me is a multi-author holiday anthology edited by Stephanie Perkins, with a contribution from Han. It is another legitimate route into her bibliography, but not a solo Jenny Han novel or a required bridge between trilogies. Look at the contents when a collection interests you: an author credit can mean one contribution within a larger gathering of voices.
Match the Lara Jean title to the reading experience
Three catalog entries can begin with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and still serve different plans: the first prose novel, its graphic adaptation and the keepsake set of all three prose novels. If you want to try Lara Jean’s narrative voice, the first prose volume is the direct starting point. If you want a visual telling of that beginning, choose the graphic adaptation deliberately. If you want the complete numbered prose sequence together, check that the set lists P.S. I Still Love You and Always and Forever, Lara Jean alongside the first title.
For someone who already owns the trilogy, the question changes. Are you interested in a different presentation or in reading another main installment? The keepsake set’s three named contents answer the second question clearly: it gathers that sequence rather than adding a fourth prose novel. You might still want the packaging or additional material, but that becomes a conscious collecting decision. The graphic edition offers a different medium, not the missing next chapter of the prose series.
Keep that distinction when moving beyond Lara Jean. Belly’s route is the three Summer novels; the revenge route carries both Han’s and Vivian’s names. Neither requires treating every new product bearing Han’s name as the next installment. For a different author or an adult romantic reading choice afterward, compare individual descriptions in our book catalog, keeping the audience distinction visible. Choosing the right story and choosing a new way to experience a familiar story are both legitimate aims; Han’s editions make it useful to know which one you mean.
