From You To Me by K.A. Holt, 2018

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Amelia Peabody lives in a small town where nothing changes. And that's just fine by her. After losing her big sister, Clara, a few years ago, Amelia can't handle any more change. But when she starts eighth grade, she accidentally receives a letter that Clara had written to herself. In it, there's a list of things she'd wanted to do before the end of middle school and never finished, like get on the softball team and throw an awesome birthday party on the lake.

Amelia wonders if it's a sign from Clara. Maybe if she completed the list, her heart would stop hurting so much, and she could go back to being her old self. But as she makes her way through, Amelia finds that there's no going back, only forward. And she realizes she'll have to put her own spin on Clara's list to grow and change in the ways she needs to.

K. A. Holt's beautiful new novel is about grieving and growing up, and the ripples loss creates for a girl, a family, and a community.

(208 pages)

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I read a lot of books about death and grief this summer. Whereas both Planet Grief and Speechless tackle the aftermath of death through a setting which forces the characters to deal with their feelings (a group counselling session and a wake, respectively), From You To Me shows Amelia's struggles to cope with her overwhelming grief long after the dust has settled and the rest of the world has moved on.

It's a sad angle, and I thought Holt's representation of Amelia's grief was well done (though I'm lucky enough not to have first-hand experience in this field). However, at times I got really frustrated with Amelia. Her best friend really is a wonderful friend, putting up with way more crap than I would probably have been able to handle in her shoes. Amelia's parents are less great, but that's to be expected since they're coping with their own grief. I did kind of hate how hard her father was pushing to get his wife and daughter to come back to the lake with him (in their shoes, I don't think I'd ever go near large bodies of water ever again!).

I liked the book, but somehow it didn't hit me quite as well as the other two grief books I've read this summer. I don't know why exactly that is, but I suspect part of it is because I got pretty frustrated with Amelia at times, and perhaps partly because as a Christian I was a little uncomfortable about Amelia's thoughts on the afterlife. On the whole, though, it's a pretty good book.

If you're on a kick looking for stories about girls coping with the death of their older sister, I recommend Riding the Flume by Patricia Curtis Pfitch. That's been one of my favorite books for over a decade!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur, 2009

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A tragic accident has turned eleven-year-old Aubrey’s world upside down. Starting a new life all alone, Aubrey has everything she thinks she needs: SpaghettiOs and Sammy, her new pet fish. She cannot talk about what happened to her. Writing letters is the only thing that feels right to Aubrey, even if no one ever reads them.
With the aid of her loving grandmother and new friends, Aubrey learns that she is not alone, and gradually, she finds the words to express feelings that once seemed impossible to describe. The healing powers of friendship, love, and memory help Aubrey take her first steps toward the future.
Readers will care for Aubrey from page one and will watch her grow until the very end, when she has to make one of the biggest decisions of her life.
Love, Aubrey is devastating, brave, honest, funny, and hopeful, and it introduces a remarkable new writer, Suzanne LaFleur. No matter how old you are, this book is not to be missed. 
(262 pages)


Gosh, I love this book so much. And oh, how it makes me cry! I have read many sad fictional books, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (honestly, so many people die in that book!) to books about the Titanic and the last Romanovs, but most of them can't bring me to tears. They can make me really, really sad, it's true, but they can't make me actually cry. This book, though, gets the waterworks flowing in the first three chapters and never lets them stop. And this may sound miserable, but it's actually wonderful.

You see, this is a story of pain and grief and abandonment, but it's also the story of love and friendship and strength at the worst of times. It is the story of Aubrey, whose father and sister died in a car accident. Her mother was so incredibly consumed with grief she ran away from home a few months after the funeral, leaving Aubrey behind to take care of herself. The story is told in first person past tense, which worked well for the story by providing a compelling contrasts with the first person present flashback scenes in which Aubrey remembers life before the car accident. Instead of an info-dump at the beginning of the story we gradually find out the events of Aubrey's past as she is forced to remember them, which (you guessed it!) provides haunting snapshots throughout the story of how much Aubrey has lost.

The saddest parts of the narrative, however, are probably the letters Aubrey writes. At the beginning of the book she writes letters to her sister's imaginary friend Jilly as a way to sort of indirectly talk to a piece of her sister. As she begins to come to grips with everything that has happened to her, she starts to write more directly to her mother, father, and sister, telling them what she wishes she could say to them in person. She signs each letter "Love, Aubrey," which is the source of the title.

This is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favorite books. It's heart-wrenching, but it's also realistic and  heartwarming. Aubrey has had the unthinkable happen to her family, and she responds the way any real person would - through denial, through tears, and through shutting down at any reminder of what has happened. But as the story goes along, she learns to cope and to forgive and to live her new life with her grandmother and best friend/neighbor Bridget.

This is an amazing book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. But please, know what you are getting into. This is not a light or easy read, and if you don't want to read a book that will make you cry, then don't pick this one up. But know that it does not just toy with the emotions: it is sad because terrible, tragic things happen in life, and sometimes you have to cry about them.

Note: I have also read the author's other books, and they were really good as well. She is a master at portraying difficult emotions and reactions to traumatic situations. While I liked the other ones, though, this is still my favorite of her books.