Jenny Han Books in Order

If you want the most talked-about romance: To All the Boys I've Loved Before → P.S. I Still Love You → Always and Forever, Lara Jean
If you crave nostalgic summer drama: The Summer I Turned Pretty → It's Not Summer Without You → We'll Always Have Summer
If you like darker, high-school revenge stories: Burn for Burn → Fire with Fire → Ashes to Ashes
If you’re choosing something for a younger reader (~9–13): Shug → Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream

Jenny Han was born in Richmond, Virginia, to Korean American parents, and grew up reading anything she could carry home from the library. As a kid she loved stories about everyday life just as much as the big, swoony romances.

At school she was the quiet student who was always scribbling in a notebook. After graduating from a magnet high school in Richmond, she headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied English and kept writing on the side.

In college she began a middle-grade novel about a twelve-year-old girl named Annemarie 'Shug' Wilcox, trying to survive junior high in a small Southern town. Han sold Shug while she was still a student, getting the life-changing phone call in her dorm room in the middle of making boxed macaroni and cheese.

Han moved to New York City for graduate school and earned an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She also worked as a children’s librarian, shelving books, running programs, and paying close attention to what real kids reached for on the shelves.

From there her focus shifted to teens on the edge of big change. The summer romance trilogy that begins with The Summer I Turned Pretty follows Belly Conklin through yearly trips to Cousins Beach, first love, grief, and the complicated pull between two brothers she’s known her whole life. Not long after, Han teamed up with fellow writer Siobhan Vivian for the Burn for Burn trilogy, a darker story about three girls on a resort island whose plans for revenge take on an eerie, almost supernatural edge.

Her next chapter came with Lara Jean Song-Covey in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, P.S. I Still Love You, and Always and Forever, Lara Jean. Those books grew out of Han’s own habit of writing unsent letters to her crushes, and readers connected with Lara Jean’s mix of shyness, creativity, baking projects, and fierce loyalty to her sisters.

When the Lara Jean novels were adapted into a trio of hit films and later a spin-off series, Han stepped into a new role as executive producer. She did the same with The Summer I Turned Pretty on television, serving as creator and showrunner while helping shepherd her beach-town love triangle onto the screen.

She didn’t set out to become a full-time screenwriter or producer.

But that blend of page and screen work means she now thinks about casting, music, and scenery alongside sentences and chapters. Through it all, her stories keep circling the same themes: first love, complicated families, the ache of growing up, and the small, specific details—like a favorite dessert or a shared song—that make a moment feel real.

Han lives in Brooklyn, where she balances writers’ room meetings with time alone at her desk. She still bakes when she’s stressed, still carries a notebook, and still writes first for the reader who is most like her younger self.