A review by dusktildawn
Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

 What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.

I expected a tearjerker but all I got were a handful of tears. This is a well-written, poignant novel that certainly makes you feel but most of what I felt was surface-level at best. I struggled to find something to discuss in this review because nothing stood out to me. It's a well-done study of grief and loss and how tragedy affects not only the victims but the people in their orbit, and the main character Edward is a compelling protagonist, and so too are his aunt and uncle, his friend/neighbor Shay and the people who help him overcome his trauma. 

This book was at its best when we were in Edward's head, reading along as he began his journey of survival. The author does a great job of crafting the realistic perspective of a 12-year-old boy, struggling to cope with the enormity of his loss. He never feels older than he is and I truly felt the scope of his pain. There were some genuine moments of beautiful writing as he tried to figure it all out. I liked how complicated his relationships were and how everyone felt like a real person with realistic emotions. His relationship with his brother Jordan especially continued to break my heart.

The letters Edward received were the main source of my handful of tears because something about them just felt so final and bleak. I could imagine someone writing what they did, saying what they said. Just writing to free themselves from the weight of loss upon their chest. So everything with Edward was great, and the story was at its best when it involved him.

The air between us is not empty space. 

But I suppose what lost me a bit were the chapters where we focused on the passengers who died during the crash. I understood their purpose and can respect what the author was going for, but outside of the Adler family, I struggled to connect with any of them and it dragged the story down by pulling it to a halt. They certainly felt like real people, gathered from all walks of life, and now forever unified in their shared deaths. But when I turned the page and those chapters appeared, I felt like I was being forced to read them. They kept me away from the true heart of the novel, Edward. I didn't feel anything for them, I just felt detached. I was there, reading about their past and their future plans and how they had all ended up on the plane but I couldn't quite bring myself to care. I just wanted to see how Edward was doing and I have no clue why that was. 

The only aspect I liked was trying to solve the mystery of how the plane crashed which likely wasn't the intention but I had to hold onto something to get through those chapters which I quickly began to dislike. Only toward the end as their lives approached their end did any of those characters on the plane elicit any emotion from me.  Those final chapters where those chapters get shorter and the pilots lose control were terribly sad and made me think of everyone who has ever died in a crash such as this. Still, I wouldn't have minded a novel focused solely on Edward's survival.