Pack Up the Moon by Kristan Higgins explores the aftermath of being widowed. Josh and Lauren are a couple madly in love, but Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. She spends the last few months of her life writing letters that will have delivered to Josh after her passing. Both the plot and the writing were outstanding. I got so invested in this book. I will admit the three weird popular culture references from this book were a little out of place.
Iris Winnow is hung by anticipation with her brother’s departure to fight in a war between the gods. Life is messy with her mother’s addiction and money being tight. So, winning the columnist position at the Oath Gazette seems like seems like the only thing that can get her out of the mess. She is worried about her brother’s absence, so she writes letters to him and slips them under her wardrobe. All of that only to fall into the hands of her rival at the Oath Gazette, Roman Kitt, who is also fighting for the columnist position.
Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer is about Juliet, whose mother passed away, and Declan, who works at a cemetery for required community service. Juliet writes letters to her mother as a way to feel connected to her, and Juliet leaves these letters at her mother’s grave. Though she never received any response, she returns to her mother’s grave one day to find a response to one of the letters. The response was written by Declan, although neither knows who the other is.
Caitlin is a popular teenage girl living in the United States, living a very comfortable lifestyle. Martin is a poor teenage boy living in the bush of Zimbabwe in South Africa. Caitlin gets an assignment at school to write to a pen pal. She ends up with Martin. Martin is the top of his class and is the only one at his school who gets a pen pal from America. They learn more and more about each other and their very different lifestyles. They create an unbreakable bond and have the adventure of a lifetime together.
Mark Dunn’s realistic fiction novel narrates the life of Ella Minnow Pea through letters as she tries to survive on her dystopian-like island run by a tyrannical council. Ella lives on the fictional island of Nollop, named after Nevin Nollop, the author of the sentence “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” A statue of Nollop with his famous sentence engraved on tiles resides in the town. When tiles, each bearing one letter begin to fall, the heads of the island; the Council, takes it as a sign from Nollop’s ghost to eliminate all use of the fallen letters.
