Juliet Young has always written letters to her photo-journalist mother. When she is killed in a hit-and-run accident, Juliet continues this tradition – leaving letters at her mother’s grave. Declan Murphy is not the kind of student you want to cross. He is stuck at the local cemetery carrying out community service after crashing his father’s car after he’d been drinking. When he finds a letter at the cemetery he is struck by the content and decides to write back.
The opening chapters of the novel are a little confusing as we try to establish who the two characters are, and how they are linked. However, it is evident that both these characters are struggling to deal with grief. Though Juliet and Declan have this shared grief, they don’t seem to have anything else in common.
In real life you might be tempted to ignore a note written on a letter left at a grave. However, Juliet is angered by someone reading her innermost thoughts and decides to respond. Thus begins a rather quirky exchange, which allows us to learn an awful lot more about Juliet and Declan than we would if they were constantly censoring what they were telling us.
I really liked the alternating style of this novel. We were able to see beyond the surface of the two characters, and it was refreshing to see them bond without actually meeting.
Inevitably, the two start to work out who each other is. They trust each other to reveal their true feelings about the events that have happened in their lives, and we get to see their shifting relationship as they start to think about how to move on and take control of what happens to them a little more.
The ending is, perhaps, more resolved than might reasonably be expected to occur but I liked the fact that the writer allows us to see the potential for change, and shows how sometimes taking a risk can pay off.
Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this in advance of publication.