Review - "Letters to the Lost"

Letters to the Lost
by Brigid Kemmerer
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 6th April 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

"You can't make your own path with your eyes closed."

Galley provided by publisher

How do I put into words how much I loved this book? It wrecked me. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I cried over a book, but this one made me cry at least twice and tear up many times more.

Letters to the Lost is the story of Juliet and Declan, both of whom have lost someone in their family, as they start exchanging letters after Declan responds to one Juliet has written and left on her mother's grave. It's an emotional bruiser of a book, with suckerpunches coming basically every page, no holds barred. It does this all the while being a far from complex story - it's about two people finding refuge in each other, while not knowing who the other is.

It's written in dual POV, so you get to put yourself in the shoes of each person. Which is good, because a lot of times when you have a dickhead character, like Declan is painted as in Juliet's POV to begin with, you don't get a sense of how they actually are because it's single POV. And that makes any sort of character development, unless very explicitly done, hard to believe. There was one time where I was a bit confused about who's POV it was, but that was just because it didn't change when I expected it to have (there was a reason behind it though).

A lot of things about this book really messed me up. Specifically, the ones based around the family relationships. There were some scenes, mostly revolving around Declan and his family relationships, that really got to me, and those were the times I ended up crying.

I don't know if I'll read another book this year that messes me up as much as this one (although Jeff Zentner's new one is out soon and just the blurb tells me I'm going to end up in tears). I read it in only a few hours too, and then had to wait for about an hour before I could leave my room because of all the crying. It's definitely one I'll be coming back to over and over.