Love Letters to the Dead was such an interesting and refreshing take on storytelling. I love anything that is similar to journal/diary entries, so the letter format was such a captivating way to receive the story. It also broke it up into manageable chunks, so it was super easy to get through. I loved the addition of Laurel writing to specific icons throughout history, because it added that much more character depth to Laurel and how she thought and processed her emotions. As for the plot of the story, I enjoyed reading about Laurel’s everyday life and her relationships with her high school friends. There was angst, romance, and pain, which is always a good time. It was also written in a way that is so true to an adolescent mind trying to make sense of the world and all of these new experiences and emotions. I grew attached to all of the side characters quickly and my heart broke for them on multiple occasions, which is always a good sign for world-building in a story that’s centered on a small group of people. I feel like the author beautifully tackled hard-hitting subjects like grief, sexuality, and how to cope with various forms of love when life is pulling you in different directions. (I highlighted 127 lines if that is any indicator of how much I loved the author’s writing.) I don’t really understand why this book received so many poor reviews. Most of them are about Laurel being too immature/unrelatable as a character, but I felt the exact opposite. I felt like her confusion, pessimism, and slow developments/revelations on how she felt about her sister’s death were as realistic as one could get. To each their own, I guess.
My only problem with the book was actually with the reason behind May’s death and the big plot reveal I guess you could say towards the last 25% of the book. I don’t want to go into too much detail for the sake of spoiling the last portion of the book, but if you read the trigger warnings you already know what I’m talking about. I completely understand that a topic/situation like that is far too common for young girls and should be talked about, but for the love of God is there not any other form of conflict that a female protagonist can have in a YA contemporary novel? At the risk of sounding insensitive, it’s like beating a dead literary horse. Within the first few chapters I guessed what happened to Laurel and her sister, and I wasn’t wrong. Again, not that it wasn’t a valid conflict for the story to have, I just feel as though there could have been something different that happened to the sisters that would still allow the story to have the impact that it did. In light of all this, I still ended up giving the book four stars because I just love the characters and their relationships that damn much, and I’ll take solid character building over a shitty plot twist any day of the week.