A review by labunnywtf
Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach

4.0

If you'd pick up your goddamn phone, I wouldnt have to tell you by EMAIL that your sister is dead. There was some type of fire following one of your sisters drunken bingest, and apparently, she didnt make it out. If you leave paris tomorrow, you might make it time for the service.

And thus Ava Antipova finds out that her identical twin sister, Zelda, has died. Two years after they last saw each other, after she ran away from her dysfunctional family life, her alcoholic parents, her mother's deteriorating health, her sister's unforgivable betrayal. Ran away and never looked back. Until now.

But Ava's not buying it. She knows Zelda as well as she knows herself, and something's not right here.

And then the e-mails start arriving.

I wasn't sure how to take this book at first. I thought from the premise it would be fall under suspense/thriller, though this is certainly not your typical heart-pounding, pulse-racing event. From the start, you don't know at all what's going on. Guesses are made, people are suspects. Did Ava do something? Did Zelda piss off the wrong people? Why is the ex-boyfriend so interested in hanging around and helping out?

Above all else, what is wrong with this family? These people are awful, no wonder the twins grew up to be completely fucked up.

The pieces click into place so cleanly in this story. You don't end up with a "Wait, what?" where you have to flip back through chapters to find out where this connection originated. Nothing's heavy handed, nothing's left with loose ends dangling in the wind.

This is such a clean, crisp, brilliant story. Even if you realize what's going on, what the real truth is behind Zelda, you still won't see the ending fully coming.

It's really quite the incredible read.

Received via Netgalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review