Iris Massey was only 33 when she died, after battling cancer. And it's also a book about how we find the strength to start again, sometimes more than once. It's a book about how we handle grief and regret, and how accepting that others may grieve, too, can actually help us. This is a book that deals with being honest with yourself, facing the realities you try to hide, no matter how much they might hurt. With When You Read This, Mary Adkins has written a novel that is at times funny, poignant, and frustrating (because of the characters' actions or lack thereof not because of any shortcoming of Adkins). I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss. They would be missing a wonderful debut about life, family, and the beautiful way that people touch each other’s lives. I hope that readers will not pass this up because its not a conventionally told story. I found it so fascinating how much we learned about these characters through these writings. Another character, Carl, the overly ambitious intern who works for Smith didn’t seem to be a central character, but his e-mails to Smith and the things he takes into hand provide a good bit of the humor and move the story along. Her refusal is the beginning of a series of e-mails and texts between Jade and Smith. Jade has some issues of her own, but she loved her sister. He contacts Jade, Iris’s sister to get her permission to publish it. But Smith misses Iris and wants to follow through with her wishes. He’s divorced, estranged from his mother and his PR business is falling apart and he has a gambling problem. Smith Simonyi is having problems trying to pull his life together. She leaves a printed copy for her boss and through a post-it note asks him to publish it in book form. It’s moving and enlightening to know her thoughts as she faces death. Iris Massey is dead of cancer at the age of 33, but she looms large throughout this novel as we come to know her through the blog she wrote before she died. It is about grief and regrets, and coming to terms with the past, and finding ways to move forward, and it it’s full of heart. This was described as a comedy-drama and that’s a good description as it’s not always light, but there are some really humorous parts. Most of all I loved how they connected with each other. Once I did, I couldn’t help but like these characters and feel for them, want them to get through the things they were facing. This story is not a straight forward narrative and it took me a little while to get into it, into the rhythm of the emails and the blog posts, and the texts that tell this story. 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. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.īefore 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. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. 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. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. I adored it.” - Jennifer Close, author of Girls in White Dresses and The Hopefulsįor 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.įor four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. When You Read This is inventive and witty, but more importantly it’s honest and wise. “Warm, original, funny and heartbreaking, this novel made me drop everything so I could read it in one lovely afternoon.
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