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maggiemaggio 's review for:
Love Letters to the Dead
by Ava Dellaira
While I was reading Love Letters to the Dead I kept calling it “heartbreaking and charming.” When I updated my status on Goodreads, when people asked me if I liked it my answer was always yes and it’s so heartbreaking and charming. After finishing it those are still the words I would absolutely use to describe it.
The heartbreaking aspect should be pretty obvious if you know anything about this book. Laurel’s older sister May passed away a few months before the book starts and Laurel is trying to figure out how to live in a world without May. The story begins with Laurel starting high school. Her parents are divorced and after May died her mother decided she needed to go away and grieve on her own. Laurel splits her time between her dad’s house and her Aunt May’s house. Rather than going to the same high school May attended, Laurel goes to a different high school where she doesn’t know anyone. Watching Laurel, who’s so broken, be all alone, eating lunch by herself, trying to buy the “cool” thing to eat for lunch so she fits in, was so sad. Eventually she makes friends with two girls, Hannah and Natalie, and while I was happy that she had friends, it wasn’t clear if Hannah and Natalie, who flirt with older guys to get the guys who buy them alcohol and cut class, were good friends for Laurel to have.
Most of the heartbreaking aspects have to do with May’s death. Laurel has never told anyone the truth about the night that May died, we don’t find out what really happened until the end of the book, but in this case it worked because Laurel can barely admit the truth to herself. As more of May and Laurel’s history unfolds it just gets more and more heartbreaking. May, the older sister, was kind of like a second mother to Laurel, trying to protect her from their arguing parents and protect Laurel from some of the more evil parts of life. It becomes obvious that although May tried to protect Laurel she failed at protecting herself and ultimately also at protecting Laurel. Not only did she fail at protecting Laurel, but indirectly some of the ways she taught Laurel to cope actually ended up contributing to Laurel’s difficulty acknowledging what happened to her and acknowledging May’s death.
Even though there was all this sadness in the story I was completely charmed by Laurel’s voice. She’s young, but she’s also wise beyond her years in a very realistic way. She’s also one of the most empathetic characters I’ve come across, she feels so much in such a mature way. The whole concept of the book is Laurel writing letters to dead people (which is originally a beginning of the year assignment from her English teacher). She writes to people her sister loved like Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, she writes to poets she reads in class like Elizabeth Bishop and John Keats, she writes to Allan Lane (the voice of Mr. Ed) who her aunt loves, and she writes to people she admires like Amelia Earhart. Not only does she write to them about her life, she writes to them about their lives (she obviously puts a lot of research into the letters) and makes such interesting connections between their lives and her own life and also society at large. I was completely taken in by the tone of the letters and they made me really fall in love with Laurel.
In the end though this book just didn’t sit right with me. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and ultimately I decided that it’s too similar to The Perks of Being a Wallflower for me to be able to get past. Yes, there are many differences, but there are also many similarities and knowing that Ava Dellaira is Stephen Chbosky’s protege just reinforced that idea in my head. Clearly that didn’t hold me back from connecting with the book, but it did hold me back from really loving it.
The book is also fairly sinister, maybe this is a naive outlook, but I don’t know if I believe the world is really that sinister. I don’t know if so many older guys go trolling for such young girls. It happens over and over again in the story and I don’t doubt it happens, especially when the girls are often looking for these guys, but the frequency of this storyline in the book got to me.
Bottom Line: This really is a heartbreaking and charming read. In the end I fell in love with the main character and the tone of the book, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about the story that just didn’t work for me. I was bothered by the similarities to The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the use of the older man/young girl storyline, but in the end I did enjoy the book and admire what Ava Dellaira did enough to make my up for my reservations.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.
The heartbreaking aspect should be pretty obvious if you know anything about this book. Laurel’s older sister May passed away a few months before the book starts and Laurel is trying to figure out how to live in a world without May. The story begins with Laurel starting high school. Her parents are divorced and after May died her mother decided she needed to go away and grieve on her own. Laurel splits her time between her dad’s house and her Aunt May’s house. Rather than going to the same high school May attended, Laurel goes to a different high school where she doesn’t know anyone. Watching Laurel, who’s so broken, be all alone, eating lunch by herself, trying to buy the “cool” thing to eat for lunch so she fits in, was so sad. Eventually she makes friends with two girls, Hannah and Natalie, and while I was happy that she had friends, it wasn’t clear if Hannah and Natalie, who flirt with older guys to get the guys who buy them alcohol and cut class, were good friends for Laurel to have.
Most of the heartbreaking aspects have to do with May’s death. Laurel has never told anyone the truth about the night that May died, we don’t find out what really happened until the end of the book, but in this case it worked because Laurel can barely admit the truth to herself. As more of May and Laurel’s history unfolds it just gets more and more heartbreaking. May, the older sister, was kind of like a second mother to Laurel, trying to protect her from their arguing parents and protect Laurel from some of the more evil parts of life. It becomes obvious that although May tried to protect Laurel she failed at protecting herself and ultimately also at protecting Laurel. Not only did she fail at protecting Laurel, but indirectly some of the ways she taught Laurel to cope actually ended up contributing to Laurel’s difficulty acknowledging what happened to her and acknowledging May’s death.
Even though there was all this sadness in the story I was completely charmed by Laurel’s voice. She’s young, but she’s also wise beyond her years in a very realistic way. She’s also one of the most empathetic characters I’ve come across, she feels so much in such a mature way. The whole concept of the book is Laurel writing letters to dead people (which is originally a beginning of the year assignment from her English teacher). She writes to people her sister loved like Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, she writes to poets she reads in class like Elizabeth Bishop and John Keats, she writes to Allan Lane (the voice of Mr. Ed) who her aunt loves, and she writes to people she admires like Amelia Earhart. Not only does she write to them about her life, she writes to them about their lives (she obviously puts a lot of research into the letters) and makes such interesting connections between their lives and her own life and also society at large. I was completely taken in by the tone of the letters and they made me really fall in love with Laurel.
In the end though this book just didn’t sit right with me. I’ve thought about it and thought about it and ultimately I decided that it’s too similar to The Perks of Being a Wallflower for me to be able to get past. Yes, there are many differences, but there are also many similarities and knowing that Ava Dellaira is Stephen Chbosky’s protege just reinforced that idea in my head. Clearly that didn’t hold me back from connecting with the book, but it did hold me back from really loving it.
The book is also fairly sinister, maybe this is a naive outlook, but I don’t know if I believe the world is really that sinister. I don’t know if so many older guys go trolling for such young girls. It happens over and over again in the story and I don’t doubt it happens, especially when the girls are often looking for these guys, but the frequency of this storyline in the book got to me.
Bottom Line: This really is a heartbreaking and charming read. In the end I fell in love with the main character and the tone of the book, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about the story that just didn’t work for me. I was bothered by the similarities to The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the use of the older man/young girl storyline, but in the end I did enjoy the book and admire what Ava Dellaira did enough to make my up for my reservations.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.