I wanted to read this book, because I'm always being asked by my students, "what's a good book to read?" Thinking this would appeal to a high school aged audience, I gave it a go. The premise is cool, girl writes letters to dead to people in the form of a journal. I liked the first half of this book, but the second half was a death march. The story of Laurel and finding herself was awkward and predictable.

I'm not sure about this book. And I'm not sure about my rating either. Maybe I should rate it lower.

I liked the idea of the book, I liked the little snippets of information you got and had to piece together over the entire course of a year. But the way Laurel wrote made her sound like a five year old, and some scenes seemed hurried and blurted out so the writer could finally get it out of the way and get it said. There were a lot of attempts at meaningful quotes in it which just didn't do it for me either.

So maybe three stars is a bit much. But two stars didn't seem right for me either. I guess I just leave it like this.

EDIT: I LOWERED MY RATING FROM 3 STARS TO 2 STARS.

Some problematic things. Little bit of cringe. Might change it to three stars after sitting on it for a bit.

Review to come.

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This latest read was a reread for me. I thought Contemporary January was the perfect chance to reread this book because I remembered loving it so so much while reading it the first time. This was a good story of a young girl going into high school and trying to figure out who she is. It’s a story that tells of grief, of what it’s like to lose a sibling and dealing with all of the feelings that come with this.

“I think it’s like when you lose something so close to you, it’s like losing yourself.”

There were a lot of things that this story tried to deal with. I think it did many things right, like the whole grief dynamic in the story. Laurel is a young girl trying to figure out how to move forward now that her sister has died, along with that her parents have split up and her mother has left. I really related with Laurel and her feelings toward her mother because I also had an absentee mother. I thought it was well done, her feelings toward her mother. Also, her feelings toward her sister were so raw and realistic and I loved it.

“When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.”

Sadly, certain parts of this story were pretty cringy. Laurel was pretty self-destructive and not always ways that I understood. There were just things I didn’t like that I don’t want to get too far into. Things that could have been written a bit better. Things involving the parts with drinking, sexual assault, and things of this nature.

“Maybe when we can tell the stories, however bad they are, we don’t belong to them anymore. They become ours. And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don’t have to just be a character, going whichever way the story says. It’s knowing that you could be the author instead.”

Overall, I’m disappointed that I didn’t love this book as much as I did the first time. Despite that, I still think it’s a good story. There was a bit too much telling instead of showing. I feel like part of this is because of the way this story is told. Laurel tells this story in the form of letters to dead famous people. So she is essentially telling these people what’s going on, but I think it could have been a bit more ‘show don’t tell’. I think part of me wanted to like this story more than I did, sadly. Though there were tons of quotes that I really enjoyed, some of which will be inserted in this review.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.