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A review by lcmarie19
Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
4.0
This was an emotionally heavy story. And a great debut for Dellaira.
The concept of writing a letter to a dead person is really fascinating, so I immediately wanted to pick up this book. The format of this book, all letters, was a bit bothersome to me at first. I just wasn't sure if that would be something I could tolerate for an entire book, but because there was a lot of dialogue within those letters, I didn't find it to be too unbearable.
Love Letters to the Dead follows a young teenage girl, Laurel, who is trying to cope with the death of her older sister, May, as well as make it through adolescence. We find out a lot about Laurel from the very beginning. This girl feels...a lot. And it takes me a while to be able to handle it.
The book starts off a bit slow, but once it picks up, it doesn't slow back down. Laurel is definitely a complext character. She feels and feels and feels. She's a sponge with no release. And that's what she's seaching for throughout the book -- a release. Her sister May is gone, her parents are going through their own thing. And she has no one to really help her process. So when the assignment of writing to a dead person is given, she takes it and run with it.
She writes to various people such as Amelia Earhart, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger... She writes to anyone who will listen to her.
It took me a while to really care about Laurel because she honestly overwhelmed me. I thought she was too much. And I still do. I did eventually adjust to the "much" that Laurel was and I began to care about her. The supporting characters throughout the book also had their own personal stories that were told through Laurel's eyes, and I began to care about them before I did Laurel. Sky, in my opinion, was a very relatable character for me. He was the most authentic, through flawed.
Dellaira does a great job of painting a powerfully sad adolescent experience. There is just so much that is absorbed throughout the book that by the end of it, you need your own release as a reader. And I think that's intentional.
I really enjoyed this book, because it didn't take much to create it. There was no major world building. Not huge plot line. Just a story about a girl growing up, falling in love, learning to forgive and deal with a harsh hand she's been dealt. A really decent read.
The concept of writing a letter to a dead person is really fascinating, so I immediately wanted to pick up this book. The format of this book, all letters, was a bit bothersome to me at first. I just wasn't sure if that would be something I could tolerate for an entire book, but because there was a lot of dialogue within those letters, I didn't find it to be too unbearable.
Love Letters to the Dead follows a young teenage girl, Laurel, who is trying to cope with the death of her older sister, May, as well as make it through adolescence. We find out a lot about Laurel from the very beginning. This girl feels...a lot. And it takes me a while to be able to handle it.
The book starts off a bit slow, but once it picks up, it doesn't slow back down. Laurel is definitely a complext character. She feels and feels and feels. She's a sponge with no release. And that's what she's seaching for throughout the book -- a release. Her sister May is gone, her parents are going through their own thing. And she has no one to really help her process. So when the assignment of writing to a dead person is given, she takes it and run with it.
She writes to various people such as Amelia Earhart, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger... She writes to anyone who will listen to her.
It took me a while to really care about Laurel because she honestly overwhelmed me. I thought she was too much. And I still do. I did eventually adjust to the "much" that Laurel was and I began to care about her. The supporting characters throughout the book also had their own personal stories that were told through Laurel's eyes, and I began to care about them before I did Laurel. Sky, in my opinion, was a very relatable character for me. He was the most authentic, through flawed.
Dellaira does a great job of painting a powerfully sad adolescent experience. There is just so much that is absorbed throughout the book that by the end of it, you need your own release as a reader. And I think that's intentional.
I really enjoyed this book, because it didn't take much to create it. There was no major world building. Not huge plot line. Just a story about a girl growing up, falling in love, learning to forgive and deal with a harsh hand she's been dealt. A really decent read.