Love Letters To The Dead by Ava Dellaira

2 Stars

Obviously Mitchell and I aren’t the target demographic for this book, so take my rating with several grains of salt and I’m going to keep this short and sweet sour, just like myself. Love Letters To The Dead could have been a perfectly A-Okay book for me. The basic storyline is Laurel’s sister May is gone and Laurel is lost in her grief. She swaps schools in order to get rid of the “sister of the dead girl” stigma and is presented with an assignment of writing a letter to the dead. Rather than completing just one letter, Laurel writes a series to a series of famous young people whose flames were extinguished prematurely which eventually tell all of the truths about not only May’s death, but about Laurel’s life as well. And that’s where it lost me. The letters, the what happened to the dead sister, the grieving process, the finding herself plotlines were all great. But then . . . . .



Why the hell did everything but the kitchen sink need to be thrown in before this was over???? Laurel’s sister croaked and that should have been enough for one book. But nooooooooo, God forbid you don’t have a “superbadawful” happen to some poor girl in every YA novel. I know I’m kind of a robot and don’t cry very often, but I do recognize when I’m supposed to have an emotion. The one time I’m guaranteed NOT to have them? When an author is trying to manipulate them out of me . . . .



And just to confirm to all that I’m in fact a giant dick – I don’t understand the allure of Kurt Cobain either. As the book states . . . .

“You didn’t want to be the spokesperson of a generation.”

Somehow my generation (the one who actually grew up listening to a live Kurt Cobain rather than a dead one) was able to respect this. Now he’s become a martyr. I don’t get it.