John Ambrose McClaren

John Ambrose McClaren is a former almost-love of Lara Jean Covey whose return is marked by two very different settings: the memorial for his grandmother, Stormy, and the disorderly Beach Week party at Peter Kavinsky’s house. He carries news of a death, offers Lara Jean encouragement as she speaks in Stormy’s honor, and later greets her with the easy familiarity of their shared past. Their connection remains wistful and unfinished rather than renewed as a romance, making him a figure through whom the novel lets old tenderness persist alongside new beginnings.

Identity and Background

John is Stormy’s grandson and, by Lara Jean’s account, her favorite. Stormy and John were very close. His first significant appearance in this part of the story comes not in person but by text: after a long silence, he tells Lara Jean that Stormy died in her sleep the previous night and that the funeral will be held in Rhode Island on Wednesday. The message gives Lara Jean the news she would have wanted, while making John the messenger between the loss and her immediate response to it.

Lara Jean has not seen John since almost exactly a year earlier, on her birthday. She remembers their connection as something that nearly became a relationship but never quite did. That distinction matters: their past is more than casual friendship in her memory, yet it never acquired the settled shape of a romance. The gap between what almost happened and what did happen gives their reunion its mixture of familiarity and awkwardness.

Stormy’s Memorial

At the memorial, Lara Jean prepares to speak about Stormy in front of a small group of residents and staff at Belleview. John had said he would come if he could return from Rhode Island in time. When he arrives, he is wearing a pressed button-down shirt and khakis, and he takes a seat beside Alicia on the couch. Lara Jean waves; he answers with an encouraging smile. His quiet presence steadies the scene before either of them says much.

Lara Jean’s speech begins with Stormy as an eighteen-year-old in the summer of 1952. She evokes Frank Sinatra on the radio, the starlets Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, Stormy’s place in the marching band, her award for Best Legs, and her regular Saturday-night dates. The story centers on a date with a boy named Walt and a dare that sends Stormy skinny-dipping in the town lake. The details make the speech a portrait of Stormy’s appetite for life rather than a list of facts about her death. When Lara Jean says Stormy could never turn down a dare, Mr. Perelli and others murmur agreement; John, as her grandson, belongs to the circle of people who recognize that quality as unmistakably hers.

After the speech, John tells Lara Jean that Stormy would have loved it. He looks at her with warmth and appreciation and calls her a nice girl. The exchange brings the public tribute back to their private history: Lara Jean feels, in seeing him again, something like encountering an old boyfriend, though they never dated. The feeling is familiar but slightly awkward because so much remains unsaid between them.

Their conversation also touches on Stormy’s hopes for John. She had kept asking him to bring his girlfriend to visit, and he admits that he never got around to it and now feels bad. The remark connects his grief to an ordinary regret: the visit Stormy wanted did not happen. Lara Jean asks whether he is dating someone, but their talk soon turns to college, where the future offers a less emotionally charged subject to share.

College Choices and an Unfinished Connection

John has not decided where he will go. He is considering College Park for its business school and proximity to Washington, D.C., or William and Mary, which is ranked higher but located in what he regards as the boonies. His father is disappointed that he did not get into UNC; John says he might try to transfer there as a sophomore. Lara Jean expresses sympathy and chooses not to mention that she herself was wait-listed at UNC. Their exchange places both characters at a threshold, weighing possible futures without yet knowing which one will become theirs.

The college conversation does not settle the ambiguity between them. Instead, they laugh, and a kind of understanding passes between them. John’s indecision and Lara Jean’s withheld information make the moment a small meeting of people whose lives are moving forward on separate, still-uncertain tracks. Their shared history is present, but neither treats it as a claim on the other’s future.

Beach Week and the Present

Later, at a party at Peter’s house, Lara Jean sees John going through the refrigerator. The house is in sandy disarray: a broken wicker chair sits on the deck, beer cans are scattered about, and a wet orange towel has left a large mark on the beige couch. Because Peter has been in an unpredictable mood, Lara Jean hesitates over whether to find him and tell him John is there. Before she decides, John looks up from behind the refrigerator door, holding and eating a carrot, and says he thought he might see her.

Lara Jean responds cheerfully, though she had just considered backing away before he noticed her. John gives her a one-armed hug because the carrot is still in his hand. He has just arrived with his group and asks where she is staying; she asks whether he has seen Peter. The casual greeting cuts through Lara Jean’s apprehension, but the setting retains the tension she felt: this reunion takes place in Peter’s house, where John’s presence could matter to Peter and to Lara Jean’s sense of the past.

The available encounters do not establish a renewed romance between John and Lara Jean. At the memorial, their warmth is edged with wistfulness and words left unsaid; at the party, the affection takes the form of a friendly hug and easy conversation. John remains significant not because he displaces Peter, but because their history makes the present more layered: Lara Jean can recognize what almost happened while continuing into a different future.

Narrative Role and Significance

John’s role links remembrance with transition. His message makes Stormy’s death real to Lara Jean; his attendance at the memorial helps turn grief into a shared act of remembrance. At the same time, their reunion revives the memory of a near-relationship at precisely the point when both are facing college decisions and the end of familiar routines. The book allows those strands to meet without forcing them into a romantic resolution.

That restraint gives John’s appearances their particular emotional shape. He is both Stormy’s close grandson and Lara Jean’s almost-something: a person whose importance comes from distinct bonds that converge around loss, memory, and the passage into adulthood. His supportive smile at the memorial and carrot-in-hand greeting at the party hold different registers of the same connection—solemn care and everyday ease—while leaving the future of his own college plans, and the full meaning of what passed between him and Lara Jean, open.