A review by chloek608
Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I recommend this book if you like:
-Young Adult high school setting
-covering hard issues like bereavement and family problems
-unlikely friends

I loved how easy this book was to read. Chapters are short and at the start of each chapter is a letter or email to read which made it very hard to set down as I kept wanting to read more. I love books that include note type parts, texts and letters etc. 

There was a lot of character development and we dive head first into Juliet living with grief from her mum’s death. 

Declan has a lot going on in his life and his family have never been a supportive unit which has led to some bad decision making landing him in community service, mowing grass at the cemetery.
Declan starts anonymously writing letters to Juliet and they confide in each other like no-one else before. But they come close to figuring out who each other is.

The mystery with the possibility Declan was involved in Juliet’s mum’s death was intense and I was glad that the two incidents were separate. Juliet uncovered that her mum actually flew home days earlier, was involved in a long term cheating scandal all discovered by developing her mother’s film camera.

I wish there was more of a romance and that they had discovered each other earlier in the book.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Suicide, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Pregnancy