“People say fairy tales aren’t real. Except sometimes, happily ever after is for real.”

So begins Netflix’s “To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.” The sequel to 2018’s “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” “P.S. I Still Love You” picks up at the beginning of Lara Jean’s (Lana Condor) official relationship with Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Lara Jean dances around her room, lip-synching to 80s love songs as she prepares for her first date with Peter—because no, all the dates they went on in the first movie don’t count—that was only fake dating.

But now Lara Jean is in a real relationship, and she expects it to be like something out of a romance novel. (The “To All The Boys” series is actually an adaptation of a trilogy of romance novels with the same names by Jenny Han, if you’re interested.) Except relationships don’t work that way. They aren’t immediately perfect, and there are going to be some misunderstandings, as Lara Jean discovers when another recipient of one of her letters writes her back.

Let’s get one thing clear from the beginning: I am not a fan of jealousy plots. Love triangles are simply not my thing. So the main plots of “P.S. I Still Love You,” Lara Jean’s insecurity about her standing with Peter as compared to his previous girlfriend Gen and her simultaneous attraction to old crush John Ambrose, just didn’t hit for me. I spent a lot of the movie confused about whether I was supposed to be rooting for Lara Jean to choose Peter or John Ambrose, with little preference for one over another.

The best parts of the movie didn’t lie in the romantic relationships at all, but in Lara Jean’s relationships with her family and friends. Her chemistry with her sister Kitty and her father—who also had a super cute budding relationship with their neighbor—felt like a real familial relationship, complete with the teasing and awkwardness that entails. Stormy, a resident at the retirement home where Lara Jean volunteers, may spend most of the movie giving her bad advice, but ultimately she is there to support Lara Jean in an almost grandmotherly way.

Although Lara Jean’s high school friends, Chris and Lukas, were not nearly as present as in the first movie, their bond still felt strong. And even Gen, a former friend who spent almost the entire first movie sabotaging and bullying Lara Jean, became less of a stereotypical ‘popular girl’ character and more real. The scene in the treehouse, where Lara Jean realizes that she will always be connected to Gen, even if they aren’t friends anymore, was one of my favorite scenes of the movie.

It’s a shame, then, that the romance plots that the movie spends so much time on are comparatively underdeveloped. John Ambrose, though sweet, was just another middle school crush, and Lara Jean’s attraction to him seems to be mostly based in nostalgia and the relative simplicity of not having to navigate a relationship with him. Outside of that, his character is almost nonexistent; he moved away in middle school, but apparently moved back (for reasons that are never given) and resents Peter’s popularity, making the relationship between John Ambrose and Peter a direct mirror of Lara Jean and Gen’s. But, that’s it.

Peter and Lara Jean’s relationship is more complicated, but even that doesn’t feel like it gets the exploration it deserves. Much of this is a fault of the narration; the movie is narrated by Lara Jean, and so when Peter makes a mistake that she doesn’t understand, or when she is jealous of him for remaining friends with Gen after their breakup, she frames him as the bad guy. While this is, unfortunately, necessary for the plot, it gets frustrating, especially since at times Centineo’s performance can’t break through that narrative framing, leaving Peter and Lara Jean’s eventual happy reconciliation feeling almost undeserved.

That being said, the movie is still enjoyable. In the last couple of years, Noah Centineo has starred in many a Netflix rom-com (“Swiped” and “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” among others), and while “P.S. I Still Love You” is not as good as “To All The Boys,” it’s certainly one of his better movies. It’s a trope-filled fun time that is certainly dramatic—in the last shot of the movie, Peter and Lara Jean seem to fly into the air while kissing—but it manages to remain cohesive, with Lara Jean’s ultimate realization that her relationship isn’t a fairy tale grounding the film while the upbeat love songs kept it enjoyably cheesy.