And as a tangent, I also liked learning a little more about some of the dead people she was writing about, such as River Phoenix or Judy Garland. She also did this well while capturing the voice of someone who had been through a lot of trauma yet is still trying to make a new life for herself and move on. Not only the unique format kept me turning the page, but Ava Dellaira's writing was quite beautiful and poetic throughout the duration of the book. Whatever the reason, this book drew me in and I found it hard to set the book down reading letter after letter as Laurel, our main character, describes her first year of high school to Kurt Cobain, or processing her traumas to Amelia Earhart.

Or maybe it was the discovery of the Queen song, 'Face it Alone', recorded around the time that Freddie Mercury knew he was dying, and this song was released years after he passed when it was thought to have been lost to history, and it felt like he was speaking to the world beyond the grave. Maybe it was the structure of this book being written as a series of letters to various dead people throughout history that had clicked with me after I had started to dabble in more non-traditional forms of writing. But after not having read a book in a while, I felt compelled to pick up this book, one that had intrigued me but was always on the fence about. So it has been a minute since I've written a review for a book, much less read one with my life the past year or so.

Love letters to the dead book