Gen

Gen is Peter Kavinsky’s former girlfriend and one half of the high-school-sweetheart story that Lara Jean sets against her own emerging history with Peter. Though the evidence offers little direct action from Gen herself, her past relationship remains a point of comparison as Lara Jean considers how their different beginnings might be described.

Identity and Place in the Story

Gen appears in Lara Jean’s reflections as Peter’s former girlfriend. Lara Jean associates the two with the familiar story of high-school sweethearts, while her own relationship with Peter resists that label: she and Peter grew up together, but that history also belongs to Lara Jean and Josh Sanderson. Gen’s significance here is relational and retrospective; she helps define the shape of Lara Jean and Peter’s story by offering a contrasting origin.

Connections to College and Friendship

In a conversation about college, Margot Song advises Lara Jean to make friends of her own rather than relying on Peter’s lacrosse circle. Margot also recommends joining an Asian-American association, explaining that studying in a different country has meant missing that kind of community and connecting college with the discovery of racial identity. She cites Tim Monahan as an example. The exchange places Gen within a wider network of high-school relationships that Lara Jean and Peter will carry into college, even as their social worlds begin to change.

Memory, Comparison, and Narrative Role

Near the end of the novel, Lara Jean imagines how people at college will ask her and Peter how they met. The short version, growing up together, seems to belong more to Lara Jean and Josh Sanderson; high-school sweethearts belongs to Peter and Gen. Lara Jean’s question is not simply which label fits, but what story will be distinctly theirs. She concludes that theirs began with a love letter. Gen’s past with Peter therefore serves as a foil: an established romantic origin against which Lara Jean recognizes the particular beginning of her own relationship.