When You Read This by Mary Adkins / Review

*E-Galley provided by Harper Collins*

When You Read This by Mary Adkins



Synopsis:
Iris Massey is gone.
But she’s left something behind.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss.

Review:
When You Read This by Mary Adkins is now a fave read of 2019 for me. The story format is told through a series of emails and texts which at first made me think the story wouldn't be fully fleshed out, but I think it was told amazingly. We see two people united by someone's death, Iris' Massey's boss Smith and her sister Jade. Two people who knew her differently each write and express how they knew her and not only bond over Iris, but bond over their similarities and differences.

I enjoyed this book because I can understand as an older sibling what Jade was thinking and how she felt protective about her blog as she didn't want this published. I also see Smith's side as he was following Iris's wishes. Even though it's told through emails & texts, you get both perspectives and you can also get to read Iris' blog posts, which I think are greats arcs in uniting the both POVs.

Overall, I definitely recommend this lively collage of a book. And once you read it I think not only will the last chapter make you smile, but also want to fire Smith's intern!!

When You Read This is out February 5.





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