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A review by happylilkt
Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay
2.0
2.5/3 stars
I have mixed feelings about this riff off of Daddy-long-legs / Austen fan-fiction. I made the mistake of reading the former just before and the tone difference between the two is striking. In DLL, the heroine is precocious, irreverent, understandable naive, and completely delightful and delighted with her Cinderella circumstances. In DMK, the heroine is wounded, insecure, surprisingly naive, and over the top at quoting books. I personally think it would have been better to have gone the comedy/wit route as a nod to the spirit of DLL, but I can appreciate why the subject matter led the author to embrace this tone, too, and I think it works for the most part.
I didn't find the heroine's habit of quoting books as a defense / coping mechanism very believable (books as an escape, yes, quoting lengthy passages, no.). It seemed such a stretch, and so it always jarred my reading of the novel. :(
But the main issue I have with the book is this: The letters... DLL wrote charming, irreverent, delightful letters. And they *were* letters. In DMK, they are NOT letters. Oh sure, they are formatted as letters, but it is just a novel pretending to be correspondence. I cannot believe that anyone would write multiple letters in the format, with that dialogue and detail to some head of a foundation. It just didn't work. I understand why the author did it that way (for storytelling purposes), but it just wasn't believable to me and, again, took away from my experience as a reader.
So in sum, I actually liked the story and characters (and I love Chicago so I'm always happy to see stories set there!), but I didn't like the DLL container the author forced it into. I think it did her no favors and only drew uncomplimentary comparisons with DLL and impeded my ability to fully engage with the book.
That being said, I would read more by this author again.
The book has no profanity or sex. It addresses topics such as child abuse and dysfunction. It could be appropriate for a precocious middle schooler, and definitely a high school reader.
I have mixed feelings about this riff off of Daddy-long-legs / Austen fan-fiction. I made the mistake of reading the former just before and the tone difference between the two is striking. In DLL, the heroine is precocious, irreverent, understandable naive, and completely delightful and delighted with her Cinderella circumstances. In DMK, the heroine is wounded, insecure, surprisingly naive, and over the top at quoting books. I personally think it would have been better to have gone the comedy/wit route as a nod to the spirit of DLL, but I can appreciate why the subject matter led the author to embrace this tone, too, and I think it works for the most part.
I didn't find the heroine's habit of quoting books as a defense / coping mechanism very believable (books as an escape, yes, quoting lengthy passages, no.). It seemed such a stretch, and so it always jarred my reading of the novel. :(
But the main issue I have with the book is this: The letters... DLL wrote charming, irreverent, delightful letters. And they *were* letters. In DMK, they are NOT letters. Oh sure, they are formatted as letters, but it is just a novel pretending to be correspondence. I cannot believe that anyone would write multiple letters in the format, with that dialogue and detail to some head of a foundation. It just didn't work. I understand why the author did it that way (for storytelling purposes), but it just wasn't believable to me and, again, took away from my experience as a reader.
So in sum, I actually liked the story and characters (and I love Chicago so I'm always happy to see stories set there!), but I didn't like the DLL container the author forced it into. I think it did her no favors and only drew uncomplimentary comparisons with DLL and impeded my ability to fully engage with the book.
That being said, I would read more by this author again.
The book has no profanity or sex. It addresses topics such as child abuse and dysfunction. It could be appropriate for a precocious middle schooler, and definitely a high school reader.