John Ambrose McClaren

John Ambrose McClaren is Lara Jean’s childhood friend and a possible love interest whose return makes the past feel vivid enough to compete with the present. A reply to a letter he was never meant to receive brings them back into contact; shared memories, an unexpectedly intimate kiss, and a thoughtful birthday gift deepen their connection. In the end, John asks whether he ever had a chance, and Lara Jean admits how easily she could love him while choosing Peter Kavinsky instead.

Identity and Background

John once lived with his family in the house Lara Jean remembers as their old home in Meadowridge. After the family moved, a letter addressed to him went astray. His return to Lara Jean’s life is therefore shaped from the outset by distance and delay: the letter was written in September, but he received it only after Mr. Barber of Barber Landscaping removed a fallen tree from the driveway and brought it to him. The Barbers had moved into the former family home, and the unexpected delivery finally gave John the opportunity to answer.

The correspondence also establishes him as a boy who remembers childhood in concrete, shared episodes rather than vague sentiment. He recalls Lara Jean’s older sister making peanut brittle in the microwave and the children holding a break-dancing contest to decide who would get the biggest piece. He remembers being locked out of his house, finding Lara Jean at the tree house, and reading together until darkness forced them to use a flashlight. He also remembers her daring him to ask a neighbor who was grilling hamburgers for one to share; he was too timid to do it, and later got in trouble at home because no one knew where he had been. The detail that he considered the adventure worth the trouble gives their old friendship an easy intimacy, built from small misadventures.

The Letter and the Return of Their Friendship

John’s reply explains why the letter took so long to reach him, then turns its arrival into an act of remembering. Lara Jean answers by explaining that she wrote it in eighth grade as one of the private letters she made when she liked a boy, never expecting him to see it. Her younger sister Kitty Covey sent the hidden letters out in September. What begins as an accidental disclosure thus gives John and Lara Jean a reason to exchange memories directly, while also exposing the feelings she had once kept private.

Lara Jean’s response matches his recollections with her own. She remembers that John’s friend Peter won the peanut-brittle contest, though she jokes that Peter would have taken the biggest piece regardless. She recalls Peter taking the last slice of pizza, then fighting with Trevor Pike over it until the pizza fell and nobody got any. She also remembers the children saying goodbye when John moved: she brought a chocolate cake with chocolate peanut-butter frosting, but the family’s forks and plates were already packed, so they ate it with their hands on the front porch. The chocolate left stains at the corners of her mouth, a detail she remembers as embarrassing. The exchange makes their renewed contact reciprocal: John’s recollections do not stand alone but prompt Lara Jean to return to the same childhood world from her own angle.

Their next meeting takes place at the tree house, where Lara Jean has arranged a gathering around a time capsule. She arrives carrying ice cream sandwiches, Hawaiian Punch, and Cheez Doodles, along with portable speakers and her phone, and sees John waiting outside, looking up at the tree house. She had expected Peter or Chris to be present to ease the awkwardness, but finds herself alone with him at first. Later, at Belleview, she is preparing a resident social when John enters in a light-blue Oxford shirt and navy sport coat. She ducks behind a table, thinking of the Assassins game and the chance to take him out, until Stormy calls her out and offers to introduce them. John’s startled question about why Lara Jean is there captures how unexpectedly their paths have converged again.

Reconnection and Growing Intimacy

Their connection is not only a matter of shared childhood. Lara Jean tells John that her attendance at Model UN was deliberate: she had gone looking for him, remembered how much he liked it in middle school, and wanted to see how he had turned out. John explains that he joined Model UN to improve his public speaking because of his stutter. The exchange revises what might have seemed like coincidence into a meeting Lara Jean had actively sought, while revealing a personal reason behind John’s participation.

At Belleview, John’s family connection explains another of their encounters: he arrives in a red Mustang convertible and tells the others that his great-grandmother lives there. Stormy is his great-grandmother and Lara Jean’s friend. That evening, John and Lara Jean are dressed for a 1940s-themed dance, he in a World War II uniform and jaunty hat and she with a victory roll and red lipstick. After they leave together, Lara Jean delights in the make-believe quality of being in the convertible beside a boy in uniform, looking up at the moon and stars. She urges him to drive faster, and the two circle around before stopping at a light.

John puts an arm around Lara Jean and asks whether this is how people behaved in the 1950s. She points out that their clothes are technically from the 1940s, and he kisses her. The kiss interrupts the playful historical imagining with a real present-tense intimacy. When John pulls away, he asks whether it was better than the first time. Lara Jean is dazed; some of her red lipstick is on his face, and she wipes it away. They remain still when the light turns green until a horn behind them makes the moment end. The scene gives their childhood closeness a new possibility, without settling the choice Lara Jean will ultimately make.

The Birthday Gift and the Choice

On Lara Jean’s birthday, John leaves school early and waits for her outside. Seeing him in the afternoon light brings back her memory of having loved him from afar: she recalls admiring his slender hands and cheekbones, and once knowing his face by heart. That remembered devotion is not merely a story John tells about their past; it is a feeling that returns to Lara Jean as she approaches him in the present.

His gift makes that attention tangible. Inside a white box is a snow globe about the size of an orange, with a brass base. A boy and girl skate inside: the girl wears a red sweater and earmuffs and traces a figure eight while the boy admires her. Lara Jean connects the preserved scene to the night it snowed in April. She says that only someone who really knew her could have chosen it, and the gift moves her because it makes her feel understood. She hugs John, who holds her tightly and wishes her a happy birthday. The globe turns a fleeting shared memory into an object Lara Jean says she will keep forever, even as the future of their relationship remains undecided.

The choice becomes immediate when Peter appears and John challenges him for treating Lara Jean badly before wanting her back. Peter answers that Lara Jean promised not to break his heart and did so. Lara Jean apologizes but tells Peter she cannot give him what he asks for in that moment; she leaves with Peter’s necklace still clenched in her fist. In the car, John asks, "Did I even have a shot?" Lara Jean tells him she could fall in love with him easily and is already halfway there. She describes him as perfect in memory and in the present, and says he is the boy she would pick, before acknowledging the unfinished qualification that makes the choice painful.

John does not try to turn that admission into a demand. He says, "I don't think it was our time then. I guess it isn't now, either," and leaves open the possibility that it might be their time one day. Lara Jean says she likes him and wishes they had gone to the eighth-grade formal together. His response recognizes both the genuine feeling between them and the limits of the present: their closeness is real, but she has not chosen him.

Narrative Role and Significance

John’s return gives Lara Jean’s earlier romantic imagination a living counterpart. The old letter, written privately and sent without her knowledge, opens a correspondence that places childhood memories beside present choices. Their recurring images—the tree house, the cake eaten by hand, the snow globe, and the borrowed world of the 1940s dance—make the past feel preserved, but the story does not treat preservation as the same thing as a shared future.

His importance lies partly in the contrast between remembered love and present attachment. Lara Jean can describe John as the boy she would pick and still leave with Peter’s necklace in her hand. John’s final answer refuses to erase that contradiction or force a resolution: he accepts that the timing is wrong now while allowing for a future they cannot promise. His character therefore makes the romantic choice less a dismissal of the past than a recognition that memory, possibility, and present commitment are not interchangeable.