Candace's Book Blog

Love Letter to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Hardcover, 323 pages

Expected Publication: April 1st, 2014

Source: Gift

It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more; though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was; lovely and amazing and deeply flawed; can she begin to discover her own path.

I've been dreading writing this review. It's just a difficult one to really piece together my thoughts. They are all over the place. So I'll just start from how I felt from the beginning.

The first half or so of this book was rather slow for me. Sometimes I didn't feel like reading it at all. But I had a friend tell me that there is more to it, that it's not just about her sister dying and her grief. So then I was curious and wanted to know what the other thing is. I wasn't expecting it to take so long, and I was expecting more hints. Any hints were so vague I couldn't really guess. I felt like I was grasping at straws. I kept expecting something to happen and it didn't. Not until pretty close to the end when everything was revealed. So that was frustrating to me. But if you can just go with it then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. It might have partly been my mood too.

The next thing I want to mention is definitely a positive. Laurel writes letters to dead people, mostly celebrities. I could connect with this. Kurt Cobain was my obsession in middle and high school. He died when I was in middle school but we (my friends and I) were obsessed from right before that. And his death was like this permission slip to go all dark about it and really obsess. So anyway, yeah, anything Kurt Cobain has me screaming YES in my head. And all the music mentioned in the book had a very 90's vibe, which I also liked. 90's music rocked, what can I say? I also liked that we learned little things about the people. I already know everything about Kurt, and I still enjoyed reading those bits. But I learned stuff about Amelia Earhart and many others that I didn't know. And it wasn't all random, it fit the story.

I was surprised that we could get such a strong vibe of Laurel's mindset from her writing the letters. But we did. I mean she cried a lot and acted erratically at times and had me sometimes wondering if there was something more going on with her. Once I found out more it made sense though. I don't know whether I liked her, which I know sounds weird. But I totally understood her. Actually, I understood her too well. {Except one thing toward the end that I did NOT get, AT ALL.}

This book deals with a lot and I'm not going to list them since that's a spoiler. But it's very very dark. Like seriously dark. It was physically hard to read at times. I had tears running down my face. I was sobbing. I stayed up until 3 AM because my brain wouldn't shut off. I couldn't stop thinking about the book. That's good and it's bad. I don't know. It's something. It's good when a book brings out so much emotion but not good when it kind of puts you in a dark place. I read YA to kind of relive my teen years. I remember how strong my emotions were, how much LOVE I felt. How much I FELT in general. I remember the highs and the fun and all the feelings. And I do remember the darker things, but I kind of don't want to relive them and this book had me reliving those darker things. This book was TOO real. It was TOO accurate. It was TOO dark. I needed some light things to make it easier to take in. There's just SO much happening and so much she's going through. And you add in her friends and their issues and it's kind of a lot. But connected, I did. I understood everything far, far too well and personally it was hard. If I was a TEEN reading this book when going through those things, that might be different. These things are firmly in my past. I survived. I moved forward. I live a normal life and am not {too} messed up. So this book for teens? Probably good. Kind of scary now that I'm an adult, but it's definitely realistic and we kind of have to deal with that. Unfortunately.

The romance in the book was good. I was unsure about it and took the whole book to be sure, but I can safely say that I'm happy with it. Another thing I want to bring up is the LGBT theme. Laurel has two friends that are girls and early on we see they are attracted to each other (the other two friends, not Laurel) but they don't accept it themselves, they are definitely not ready to face anyone else and through the book it's a constant theme. Of them loving each other but being afraid. There are other issues with their families as well. I appreciated that this was in the book and I think it was presented realistically.

The end of the book was excellent. It had a full conclusion with things solved and wrapped up. Laurel has a journey yet, but she's on the right path and I was 100% happy with it.

So what do I rate the book? Seriously, I have no clue. I'm going to go with 3.5 stars.

A reminder, I move to Wordpress TOMORROW (Tuesday) so please follow me by Bloglovin' or email so you don't miss out on anything!