  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 04/01/2017 Gr 9 Up—An astonishingly realistic look at loss, grief, love, and the importance of words. Rachel Sweetie's world changed forever the day her little brother Cal drowned. In the eight months since, she's failed to graduate from school and alienated most of her friends. Rachel's family seems to think returning to live with her aunt in their old hometown will help. She's up for the change of scenery, if only it didn't mean seeing her ex—best friend Henry. Before moving, Rachel wrote a letter to Henry professing her love and left it in his family's bookstore, Letter Library. Customers communicate with one another by writing in and marking up a select set of books and by leaving letters in between the pages. Henry never responded. He and many of the other characters are undergoing losses of their own, in varying degrees. The secondary characters are multidimensional and well defined, and their struggles are equally touching. Readers will identify with and root for them. This poignant tale exquisitely chronicles the journey from hopelessness to learning to live again. The charismatic and well-crafted cast will immediately draw readers in. There aren't pat happy endings for anyone, and the story is better for it. VERDICT This rewarding novel packs an emotional wallop; a must-purchase.—Cindy Wall, Southington Library & Museum, CT - Copyright 2017 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 04/15/2017 *Starred Review* It’s rare that a book beginning with epigraphs by Franz Kafka and David Foster Wallace lives up to those weighty words. It works in this small Australian novel because here, and in the bookshop that provides its setting, the weight of the words is measured by the connections between the people who read them. Three years ago, Rachel moved away after writing a love letter to her best friend, Henry, which he never received. Now she’s back, having failed year 12 and lost her brother in a drowning accident—but she’s not speaking about any of that. She and Henry tenuously restart their friendship as Rachel works at the bookshop Henry manages. Rachel catalogs the shop’s most unique feature, the Letter Library, which holds books with inscriptions, notes slipped between pages, and years of correspondence between lovers and strangers. It’s a project that, like the book itself, is bittersweet: the bookshop is for sale, which could set Henry on a path directly away from Rachel. In Rachel’s and Henry’s alternating chapters, interspersed with excerpts from the Letter Library, the mysteries of love, loss, death, and missed connections are explored. As she did in Graffiti Moon (2012), Crowley has built a warm cast of surprising and memorable characters and placed them in universal circumstances that slowly unfold into something extraordinary. - Copyright 2017 Booklist. Loading...
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