"I know I wrote letters to people with no address on this earth, I know that you are dead. But I hear you. I hear all of you. We were here. Our lives matter."

This was a so-so read for me. I didn't love it, but I didn't dislike it either. The concept was compelling, and the raw emotionality of the book made it a fast-paced read, but there were a lot of aspects about it that concerned me.

While reading this, I thought of myself as a freshman in high school, the same age as Laurel, and how impressionable I was, and I'm honestly really glad I didn't pick this up when I was that age. Its vulnerability masks a lot of its melodrama, small exaggerations and generalizations I would have thoroughly absorbed as realistic if I had read this when I was fifteen.

For example, while Laurel laments her loneliness in the first few letters, she is somehow able to find instant best friends after less than a month at her new school, which, speaking from experience, is absolutely not how things go. Natalie, Hannah, Kristen, and Tristan all become her friends almost instantly, with no effort on her part whatsoever, and within days of these friendships being formed they're having slumber parties and doing all kinds of crazy stuff together. Real friendships take time to build, but Dellaira chose to escalate that process for the sake of the story.

Another relationship that fell into place for Laurel without absolutely no effort was that with Sky, which bothered me far more. Sky was a perfect boyfriend. Like, absolutely perfect. Sixteen-year-old boys with admitted emotional baggage do not just drop out of - excuse my choice of cliche - the sky like that. Choosing to portray a teenage boy like that is a dangerous game to play when you're writing primarily for young teens.

What bothered me most of all, though, was all the damn crying. Every other page, somebody, usually Laurel, was sobbing. It really got on my nerves. There are other ways to express intense emotional feeling.

And I get it - it's YA. It's supposed to be a little melodramatic and overdrawn. But when you're writing about a character who has been through as much as Laurel went through, you have to consider your audience, and how they will absorb and regurgitate a story like this. There's a responsibility that comes with it.

All that melodrama, though, did really help this book to achieve what it set out to be: a touching, coming-of-age novel that truly captures grief and what it means to figure out whom you're supposed to be.