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cathyatratedreads 's review for:
Dearest Josephine
by Caroline George
2.5 stars
This whole book is written mostly in letter form, as emails or texts from Josie to her friend Faith and from Faith to Josie; as the letters from Elias to Josephine; as other texts interspersed to and from Josie’s mother, her ex, and a young man she’s befriending in the town next to the manor. The remainder is the novel written by Elias, and they’re all mixed up together. The novel and the letters from Elias are the heftiest part of the book; Josie’s emails and texts take up less space in the book and are not as well-written, considering they’re by a modern-day 18-year-old and the words from Elias are created by someone in a past era where missives were given more thought and heft. I’ve found that the method of crafting a novel exclusively through letters is a challenging one; the writer really has to do it well to make it work, and many authors simply don’t. That’s the case here. The story feels choppy and lopsided. It could have used a lot more work with a talented editor to make it flow better.
I could appreciate the “moral of the story” once the book concluded, but it felt tacked on, rather than being a truly natural conclusion of the narrative. And while I have no problem suspending belief for any kind of magical stories or stories that have some element of fantasy, this didn’t work for me because, even within the fantasy, it didn’t make sense. There still has to be some internal logic, and I never found any explanation for Elias somehow having met Josie, while she never met him.
All in all, this one fell flat.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/dearest-josephine-clean-young-adult-book-review/
This whole book is written mostly in letter form, as emails or texts from Josie to her friend Faith and from Faith to Josie; as the letters from Elias to Josephine; as other texts interspersed to and from Josie’s mother, her ex, and a young man she’s befriending in the town next to the manor. The remainder is the novel written by Elias, and they’re all mixed up together. The novel and the letters from Elias are the heftiest part of the book; Josie’s emails and texts take up less space in the book and are not as well-written, considering they’re by a modern-day 18-year-old and the words from Elias are created by someone in a past era where missives were given more thought and heft. I’ve found that the method of crafting a novel exclusively through letters is a challenging one; the writer really has to do it well to make it work, and many authors simply don’t. That’s the case here. The story feels choppy and lopsided. It could have used a lot more work with a talented editor to make it flow better.
I could appreciate the “moral of the story” once the book concluded, but it felt tacked on, rather than being a truly natural conclusion of the narrative. And while I have no problem suspending belief for any kind of magical stories or stories that have some element of fantasy, this didn’t work for me because, even within the fantasy, it didn’t make sense. There still has to be some internal logic, and I never found any explanation for Elias somehow having met Josie, while she never met him.
All in all, this one fell flat.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/dearest-josephine-clean-young-adult-book-review/