REVIEW: Dear Edward (book) by Ann Napolitano

Dear Edward is contemporary fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This alternates between the past and present. In the present, 12-year-old Edward is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills 183 other passengers, including his mother, father, and older brother. He's sent to live with his aunt (his mother's sister) and her husband, who'd been unsuccessfully trying to have a child of their own. In the past, we get glimpses of the POVs of several passengers of the doomed flight, right up to the moment it crashes.

The book covers several years of Edward's life with his aunt and uncle, as he tries to process what he went through and the grief over the deaths of his family members. 

This was one of my book club reads - definitely not something I'd normally have chosen for myself, but not bad. It was, however, a more emotionally manipulative read than I really wanted at the time. Also, this is probably not something those who are afraid of flying or who are about to fly should read. Flying doesn't really bother me, but even I found myself feeling more worried about a flight my sister was about to take than I normally would have been.

It took longer than I'd have liked for the "past" portions to finally get to the point when the plane crashed, so I spent more of the book than I should have wondering why the plane went down (which turned out to not really be that important, in the grand scheme of things). I was more willing to follow along with some of the plane's passengers than others. The businessman was kind of gross, and I rolled my eyes a bit at the one woman who'd gone through several past lives (somehow, I was the only one in our book club who caught that she'd been given a new life in Edward's present). I wished that the flight attendant had been more than just that gorgeous woman every guy wanted to have sex with. If I remember right, she was the only one who didn't have a surviving family member who sent Edward a letter.

Personally, I didn't agree with Edward that he should have gotten to see the letters sooner. I can't imagine a 12-year-old grieving boy somehow having to also process the pleas of dozens of grieving strangers in addition to everything else he was going through.

Anyway, our book club discussion was decent, and most folks liked this well enough.