Love Letters to the Dead

Good Reads

This book is written in letters to the dead ( I know what you're thinking; it's probably around the lines of "No. Really!!?!" and "How did you guess!?!" but anyway...) and the idea is super cool--at first.

So here's the deal, the protagonist Laurel is processing the tragedy of her sister's death (which takes place before the time of the novel) and she receives an English assignment to write a letter to a dead person and that is how this whole thing begins.

So it's kind of interesting for a bit. But honestly? I don't get it. Laurel says she is so torn by her sister's death, how May was her best friend, how May meant SO MUCH to her, but I don't see any of that in the actual book.

What I do see, is Laurel pining after some guy named Sky, and just in general living her life, while occasionally throwing in "May died. I'm sad. It's my fault"

And what sucks is that you don't see this girl that's torn by grief actually getting torn by grief. Which to me, just really takes away the whole point of the book.

Another thing- the dead people. She writes letters to them; a paragraph about who they were, what they did, etc. and then stuff like this:

On my first day...I used my favorite outfit from middle school instead, which is jean overalls with a long-sleeve tee shirt and hoop earrings.

The next thing I realized is that you aren’t supposed to bring your lunch. You are supposed to buy pizza and Nutter Butters, or else you aren’t supposed to even eat lunch.

And this gem:

I especially like to watch this boy, whose name I figured out is Sky. He always wears a leather jacket, even though summer is barely over. He reminds me that the air isn’t just something that’s there. It’s something you breathe in.

From this you can tell its basically written like a diary. May isn't even a huge part of it, which is awful because all I really wanted was to find out what happened to her, and that doesn't even happen until the last half. Laurel's grief doesn't even seem visible during the first half. she doesn't even seem slightly bent from the devastating thing that is losing a loved one. And the lack of grief really screwed this up for me.

Rating: 2.5/5

Happy Reading,

Sidra