Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Dear Reader

Author: Mary O'Connell

Pages:  293

Rating: PG-13 (There is almost no language EXCEPT for one page in which there is a letter that one of the main characters wrote in which the F-word is used profusely. But the rest of the book is clean. There are mentions of teenage sex but no graphic descriptions).

Summary:
For seventeen-year-old Flannery Fields, the only respite from the plaid-skirted mean girls at Sacred Heart High School is her beloved teacher Miss Sweeney’s AP English class. But when Miss Sweeney doesn't show up to teach Flannery's favorite book, Wuthering Heights, leaving behind her purse, Flannery knows something is wrong.
The police are called, and Flannery gives them everything―except Miss Sweeney's copy of Wuthering Heights. This she holds onto. And good thing she does, because when she opens it, it has somehow transformed into Miss Sweeney's real-time diary. It seems Miss Sweeney is in New York City―and she's in trouble.
So Flannery does something very unFlannery-like: she skips school and sets out for Manhattan, with the book as her guide. But as soon as she arrives, she meets a boy named Heath. Heath is British, on a gap year, incredibly smart―yet he's never heard of Albert Einstein or Anne Frank. In fact, Flannery can't help thinking that he seems to have stepped from the pages of Brontë's novel. Could it be that Flannery is spending this topsy-turvy day with her ultimate fictional romantic hero, Heathcliff, reborn in the twenty-first century?

My Thoughts: I still can't 100% decide how I feel about this book. Was it fun? Yes. Was it addicting and difficult to put down? Also, yes. But, after it was finally over I kind of felt let down. Like...I just didn't get the resolution I was expecting. And it's not that it was just a different kind of ending, but still good, it was that I felt like it all wrapped up so quickly and nothing was really resolved. Maybe I just didn't get it. I don't know. I've never read Wuthering Heights, so maybe that made the difference. If you love that book, you'll probably like this one. I also thought it was a little bit melodramatic. The reviews on GoodReads are mixed. Some love it, some hate it, as is the case with any book. And although I definitely didn't hate it, I didn't love it either. Enjoyable, fun, but not life-changing. And I'm not running out to recommend it to the nearest stranger either.