Take a photo of a barcode or cover
beckisbookshelf 's review for:
Love Letters to the Dead
by Ava Dellaira
Kudos to the marketing team on this book. Love Letters to the Dead is everywhere right now and it has already been optioned out for a movie. This is the kind of marketing a debut author dreams about. Bravo, literary agent Richard Florest and the FSG Macmillan publishing house for putting on quite the campaign.
Aslo, brava, Ava Dellaira for a beautiful novel. I really enjoyed it. I felt a connection with May and Laurel immediately. The writing is good and there’s not a lot of extra fluff in the book. It’s been edited and brought down to the most important pieces of work and that’s appreciated. The book flew by; it was a fast and emotional read that held my interest the entire time. That said, it is certainly not without its faults.
I’m getting ready to do two things I really don’t like doing in reviews:
Compare an author/work to another author/work.
Discuss religion.
Hang in there with me. I’ll be brief and to the point.
I can’t help but feel like there’s a reason that Stephen Chbosky gave Love Letters to the Dead such a sparkling review; it is essentially his book told from a female perspective. Don’t throw rotten fruit at me, I don’t like saying these things. The plot is the same. The trauma is the same. The friends are the same. The situations that the characters face is the same. The only big difference is that instead of it being the Smiths frequently mentioned it’s Nirvana. I’m sorry, Ava and Stephen, I don’t like doing this but I cannot ignore the fact that they are very close to the same book.
[But Becki – You gave The Perks of Being a Wallflower 1 star and Love Letters to the Dead 4 stars. If they’re the same why is your rating so different? Because Laurel wasn’t annoying, whiny, and self-centered. Sorry, I’m not sorry, Charlie.]
This will probably be the only time I will ever discuss religion in my reviews so let me just get this out. I am a Christian. I am not opposed to gay marriage, I don’t hate minority groups, I don’t think other religions are the root of all evil, I have piercings, tattoos, and blue hair, and I don’t believe that we are alone in the universe. There. Now that is said, I was very put off by the way that Ava (and many other authors for that matter) describes her Christian character. Aunt Amy is a naïve and boring person that loves the old TV show Mr. Ed, lives in ugly floral print dresses, uses fancy soaps when her male friend comes a-calling, and gives out over simplified Biblical references whenever something goes wrong. Why? Why repeatedly go back to the fact that she was a Christian as the basis for making her seem odd and out of date? Why not point to the fact that she was a lonely character that wanted nothing but the best for her niece and was doing her best to make up for her sister’s lack in judgment? Why not accentuate the fact that she was, after all, always doing what she knew to do, which was love Laurel? Why make her religion the most important the most demeaning thing about her? I don’t understand and it made me mad. I don’t like my religion being used as a basis to making a character stupid and boring. It’s offensive.
Pros: Engaging story, difficult to put down, seriously gorgeous cover
Cons: Essentially The Perks of Being a Wallflower, offensively stereotypical, triggers
Triggers: Sexual abuse and rape, suicide, loss of child, drug use, physical abuse, verbal abuse, abandonment, and more.
Rating: 4/5
Aslo, brava, Ava Dellaira for a beautiful novel. I really enjoyed it. I felt a connection with May and Laurel immediately. The writing is good and there’s not a lot of extra fluff in the book. It’s been edited and brought down to the most important pieces of work and that’s appreciated. The book flew by; it was a fast and emotional read that held my interest the entire time. That said, it is certainly not without its faults.
I’m getting ready to do two things I really don’t like doing in reviews:
Compare an author/work to another author/work.
Discuss religion.
Hang in there with me. I’ll be brief and to the point.
I can’t help but feel like there’s a reason that Stephen Chbosky gave Love Letters to the Dead such a sparkling review; it is essentially his book told from a female perspective. Don’t throw rotten fruit at me, I don’t like saying these things. The plot is the same. The trauma is the same. The friends are the same. The situations that the characters face is the same. The only big difference is that instead of it being the Smiths frequently mentioned it’s Nirvana. I’m sorry, Ava and Stephen, I don’t like doing this but I cannot ignore the fact that they are very close to the same book.
[But Becki – You gave The Perks of Being a Wallflower 1 star and Love Letters to the Dead 4 stars. If they’re the same why is your rating so different? Because Laurel wasn’t annoying, whiny, and self-centered. Sorry, I’m not sorry, Charlie.]
This will probably be the only time I will ever discuss religion in my reviews so let me just get this out. I am a Christian. I am not opposed to gay marriage, I don’t hate minority groups, I don’t think other religions are the root of all evil, I have piercings, tattoos, and blue hair, and I don’t believe that we are alone in the universe. There. Now that is said, I was very put off by the way that Ava (and many other authors for that matter) describes her Christian character. Aunt Amy is a naïve and boring person that loves the old TV show Mr. Ed, lives in ugly floral print dresses, uses fancy soaps when her male friend comes a-calling, and gives out over simplified Biblical references whenever something goes wrong. Why? Why repeatedly go back to the fact that she was a Christian as the basis for making her seem odd and out of date? Why not point to the fact that she was a lonely character that wanted nothing but the best for her niece and was doing her best to make up for her sister’s lack in judgment? Why not accentuate the fact that she was, after all, always doing what she knew to do, which was love Laurel? Why make her religion the most important the most demeaning thing about her? I don’t understand and it made me mad. I don’t like my religion being used as a basis to making a character stupid and boring. It’s offensive.
Pros: Engaging story, difficult to put down, seriously gorgeous cover
Cons: Essentially The Perks of Being a Wallflower, offensively stereotypical, triggers
Triggers: Sexual abuse and rape, suicide, loss of child, drug use, physical abuse, verbal abuse, abandonment, and more.
Rating: 4/5