Title: Love Letters to the Dead
Author: Ava Dellaira
Publication Date: April 1st 2014
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rating: 3 Stars
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. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to the dead—to people like Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Amelia Earhart, and Amy Winehouse—though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating the choppy waters of new friendships, learning to live with her splintering family, falling in love for the first time, and, most important, trying to grieve for May. But how do you mourn for someone you haven’t forgiven?
It’s not until Laurel has written the truth about what happened to herself that she can finally 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 truly start to discover her own path.
In a voice that’s as lyrical and as true as a favorite song, Ava Dellaira writes about one girl’s journey through life’s challenges with a haunting and often heartbreaking beauty.
Review:
“I think a lot of people want to be someone, but we are scared that if we try, we won’t be as good as everyone imagines we could be.”
Fans of Perks of being a Wallflower will enjoy this book. I found quite few similarities to it, so maybe that’s why I really enjoyed reading this book, I did have some problems with the protagonist; she got pretty annoying and boy crazed for most of the book, and was trying to be somebody she’s not a.k.a. Her sister. She was working hard to be anyone else but herself she started losing herself. Therefore, I had to keep reminding myself that this is YA book about a young teenage who is around 15 and it is ok to now know who you are at age and be boy crazed. However, even remembering reality, it did get on my nerves how much she only wanted Sky; apart from that I really enjoyed it, and towards the end she started to grow up and becoming her own self.
It’s a typical coming of age book, Laurel tries to find out herself in the middle of mourning of her sister’s death, she idolized her and pout her and peddle stool till she finally figured out the truth and that is that grownups lie to protect others they love. They put a smile on when hiding their tear stained face. It does make you think a lot about life and how you would react to a loss, and that sometimes we are lost and that is ok, no matter what age we are.
I really enjoyed learning about many dead celebrities as Laurel writes them a letter, finding out more about new poets and singers, got me interested and looking these people up and learning more of a music and poetry culture. There were many flawed characters, but that’s completely ok, we need flawed characters because people in real life aren’t perfect, and more flawed characters get introduced like Natalie, May or Laurel’s mother; we can relate to them, than some fiction image of a perfect model.
I would recommend to read this for anyone who likes YA books, and wants to read a little sad story, it didn’t make me emotional as I thought it might, but it does cover some very big topics that is relatable to anyone such as sexual assault, high school, death and most importantly being a TEENAGER!
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