20181215_165508.jpgHappy Friday!  Today I have a review of When You Read This, a brand new rom com from Harper Books publishing on February 5, 2019! I read this charmer told in epistolary style as a buddy read.

My Thoughts:

The first thing that strikes me about When You Read This is that it’s fresh and different! And I love that! It is an epistolary novel for the digital age comprised of emails, texts, and blog posts. Also included were drawings from Iris, the main character. 

When You Read this is a romantic comedy centered around Iris Massey who is dying from cancer. Notice the juxtaposition in that? She’s dying, but this book is full of humor, insight, and an endearing sweetness. 

Iris works for a public relations hound, Smith Simonyi, when she is given the heartbreaking diagnosis. Not only is her cancer terminal, she has little time left. She secretly writes a blog, which she only shares with Smith after she passes away, in hopes that he’ll find a way to publish it. 

While you would think Iris’ story would be tragic, and it certainly pulled on my heartstrings and made me tear up on several occasions, there is a lightness. I mean lightness, as in airy and refreshing, not as in too easy or trivial. The writing is sincere,  and the messages are important in how we handle approaching death for ourselves, and how we come to terms with the death of our loved ones. It’s a topic I connected to on a personal level.

In other words, When You Read This was much more than what I expected it would be. The pages are filled with fun, humor, and heart. I’m hoping Mary Adkins will gift us with another book (or three!) that leaves me feeling this same warmth. 

I buddy read When You Read This with my friend, Mere, and it’s the perfect type of buddy read with topics to discuss and a sentimentality you will want to share with a friend. 

Thanks to Harper Books for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own. 

Synopsis:

For fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell, a comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts.

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.

Have you read When You Read This, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR