When You Read This
Summary (from the publisher): A comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts, for fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell.
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.
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: I received an advance reader's edition of this novel from HarperCollins.
Smith Simonyi works in public relations but is adrift after the death of his assistant of four years, Iris Massey. Smith is surprised to discover that before her death from cancer, Iris wrote a blog filled with funny and touching thoughts on the premature end of her life, and her last wish to Smith was for him to publish it as a book. But to do so, he must get the approval of Iris' sister Jade, a chef who is struggling to come to terms with her sister's death.
Told in a series of virtual exchanges, including blog posts, emails, text messages, and legal correspondence, this modern day epistolary novel is about new beginnings after loss. A romantic comedy that is funny, surprising, and bittersweet, it is a modern day tale of life after death and building new relationships in the wake of disappointments.
This was a quick read that managed to be humorous and relatively light hearted while also dealing with the topic of death and loss. In some ways it felt as if Iris just functioned as a vehicle to bring Smith and Jade together without a real depth of characterization or sense of loss for her death, although the blogposts did help address her absence somewhat. I appreciated the more modern take on an epistolary novel and the sense of humor embedded throughout this book.
Stars: 3
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