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Sister, sister: Dead Letters | 2017

4.20.2017
(image from here)
"Zelda is fully aware that she's enticed me to play, and now I can't let it go until I've figured her out, found her, looked her in the eyes and told her that I know her BEST, that I GET HER. Which, of course, is how she will win too." - Dead Letters, p. 113

The Sum of It:
Dead Letters is like if the twins from Sweet Valley High were from Upstate New York instead of California (question mark?) and then also with more murder/arson. Because here's the thing, this book starts out with one of our main characters, Ava, through whose eyes we see most of the action, flying home to New York from her expat home in Paris to attend her dead twin sister's funeral. ONLY she is feeling a little conflicted about this because she's still getting emails from said sister, Zelda, that could only be written by her #lettersfrombeyondthegrave? Their mom let her know that Zelda died when her barn/hideout at the family's failing vineyard burned to the ground with her inside. Only sister on the plane (Ava) is like, ok, whatever, I'm having a hard time being sad about this because I'm really just wondering what's going on. Is Zelda really dead? Ava thinks not and plans on getting to the bottom of it as soon as she lands. And has a glass [bottle] of wine. 

Once she gets home, the police figure out that the barn doors were chained shut prior to the fire starting. Isn't that peculiar. Maybe the fire wasn't an accident caused by dead (?) sister's candles after all. Meanwhile, the emails keep coming and it quickly becomes clear that Ava is being led on a bit of a scavenger hunt by her supposedly deceased twin, who loved mischief. She starts digging around in her sister's life, which proves a bit tricky initially because they sort of stopped speaking when she moved to Paris, leaving Zelda at home in New York to care for their mother, who is in the throes of dementia. Add in a high school boyfriend, drug dealing strippers, literal gallons of booze, and some poor judgement, and you've got quite the situation.  

The YOA Treatment:
First of all, that cover is bangin', kudos to the designer at Random House. So we snapped this one up in a pre-order because it was recommended by fairly reliable sources as "Agatha Christie-like." Talk about a high bar. And in reading it, we both really looked for the hints of Agatha in the fast-paced tale. The premise is juicy; is the twin sister dead or not?? If not, who's sending the emails?? Is this Pretty Little Liars for grownups?? (#kindof #actuallyreallyalot). Definitely keeps you turning the pages, although for readers who are legit steeped in mystery like us (it's no one's fault but our own that we've read like hundreds of murder mysteries over the last year and a half) the ending started looking pretty inevitable about half way through. While the ending is certainly a "twist," for us the inevitability of the twist took quite a bit of the wind out of the sails (honestly if the twist had been opposite it almost would have been MORE surprising to us). Like The Long Room, I (Emily) read this one on the beach, and UNLIKE The Long Room, this was absolutely a beach read. Almost to a fault, if you know what I mean (I guess what I'm saying is any book that spends more than one scene discussing the way a tshirt lays over various aspects of a man's anatomy starts to feel less like literature and more like a romp, which is fine as long as that's what you're in the market for!) 

All that to say is that I think we both had slightly mixed feelings about this one. It was a pretty compelling mystery and kept you turning the pages, and the author (newcomer Caite Dolan-Leache) knows how to paint a picture for sure. If you're looking for a light mystery to page through while you sip pina coladas poolside, this could be a totally viable candidate. However, we didn't see a lot of Agatha in it. I mean, it was a mystery, and there was a twist, but in our opinion Agatha is in rare air, and this book didn't really carry the weight, offer the clever turns of phrase, or keep the reader guessing the same way the Queen of Mystery would. 

Our tastes are maybe too specific, but where The Long Room was a bit too serious and bleak for our palates, Dead Letters was a bit too meringue. Don't worry, next we'll post about a book that was WAY more than just right ;). 

- E. (& A.) 
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