I have a new rule when it comes to reading books: Thou shalt not read two books about suicide in a row. Because the human body can only stand so many emotions at one time. Additionally, one of the books you read will end up looking worse when compared to the other than if you have simply read it by itself.
(So knowing that I read "Love Letters to the Dead" right after devouring an amazing "I Am Here" by Gayle Forman, you should take this review with a grain of salt.)
Basically, I just wasn't that into "Love Letters to the Dead" or the main character Laurel. Laurel's pretty much a blank canvas at the beginning of the book with few likes or dislikes and not much personality to speak of. She depends on the people around her to tell her what to do or what to like or how to act when she isn't modeling herself after her dead sister. Evidently, May's death erased most of the color and sparkle from Laurel, if she had any to begin with in the first place.
Laurel's also incredibly passive. She doesn't do much besides write letters to famous dead people. She follows the few people she manages to befriend around, content to go with the oddball flow. I reached a certain point in the book when I itched to slap her into doing something, anything, on her own.
Another thing that bothered me was the writing in this book. At times Laurel seems as if she has the heart of a poet and the things she describes in her letters are incredibly touching. But at the other points the writing in this novel feels choppy and juvenile. The whole thing is very uneven which set my teeth on edge after a while.
All in all, after the hype I heard surrounding this novel and the immediate comparison to other more successfully written books, I was not overly impressed with "Love Letters to the Dead."