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Summary
Summary
One of Real Simple's Best Books of 2019
One of Thrillist's Best Books of 2019
One of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of 2019
"Fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette will love this. . . a bittersweet, often funny novel about hope, memory, and loose ends."
--Real Simple, "The Best Books of 2019 (So Far)"
A comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts, for fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell.
Iris Massey is gone.
But she's left something behind.
For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. 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. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris's last wish.
Before 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. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.
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.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Iris Massey may be dead, but her story isn't over in Adkins's endearing epistolary novel for the modern age. Before the events of the novel, Iris has died of cancer; prior to her death, she had maintained a secret blog about her health during treatment. After Iris's former boss and close friend, Smith Simonyi, learns of the blog, he approaches Iris's sister, Jade, about having the blog made into a book. Jade is not only opposed, but furious with Smith for wanting to reveal such private writing. After a rocky start, Smith and Jade eventually start corresponding about Iris, whom Smith misses so much he continues to "talk" to her over email. Jade, meanwhile, dedicates herself to researching a potential malpractice lawsuit against Iris's doctors and an email-based therapist. Told entirely in email exchanges and blog excerpts, the novel follows Jade and Smith as they help each other move on after Iris's death. Smith's emails to Iris are realistically personal, like diary entries, and Jade's initial defensiveness is an understandable coping mechanism. Although the format doesn't allow the characters to come fully to life, Adkins's debut is a touching, funny, and life-affirming tale. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A vibrant epistolary collage with pieces of satire, romance, and family drama overlapping.With six months to live according to her oncologist, 33-year-old Iris Massey covertly, and with some degree of irony, starts an account on Dying to Blog, a visual blogging platform for the terminally ill. The irony stems from the fact that Iris and her boss, Smith, helped launch the platform with their small, struggling PR firm and privately (and mercilessly) made fun of it, inside jokes being part of the deeply companionable work relationship between the two. Most of the novel takes place after Iris' death, when Smith learns that she left him a printout of this blog for potential publication. Missing his colleague and hoping to fulfill her last wishes, Smith contacts Jade, Iris' somewhat neurotic, totally no-bullshit older sister, who is a joy to read. The charming quality of Jade and Smith's developing relationshipboth combative and empatheticis anchored by their grief and by sections from Iris' blog, which is strikingly self-aware and sometimes breathtakingly poignant, especially the sentiments rendered in charts and graphs. The book moves with the entertaining swiftness and abrupt tonal shifts of communication in the digital age, with particular thanks to Carl, the intern Smith hires following Iris' death: a millennial ex machina who juices up the plot with perfect self-importance and -absorption. But thanks to Adkins, even Carl has a (hint of) compelling backstory and a delightful arc.An excellent story that's condensed into a great example of the epistolary format: something that's thrilling to expand and decode while reading. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Smith's PR business is imploding when he discovers the blog his late assistant, Iris, had been keeping between her diagnosis with aggressive lung cancer and her recent death at age 33. Technically, Smith's enthusiastic new intern, Carl, made the discovery, right before spilling his coffee on the Post-it from Iris suggesting that Smith publish the blog after she is gone. Adkins' heartfelt page-turner unfolds through emails chiefly from Smith, Carl, and Iris' tough older sister, Jade and Iris' poignant blog posts. In the anonymity of their screens, Jade and Smith share secrets and regrets and find out how to be themselves in the face of such an absurd loss. Something between them flickers but can it overpower what Smith may have felt for Iris, or Jade's disapproval of his turning Iris' blog into a book? Though Iris' death is the heart of her debut, Adkins keeps an overall lighthearted tone; hilariously hair-pulling emails from Carl and comments on Iris' blog provide frequent comic relief. A natural read-alike for Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) and Rainbow Rowell's Attachments (2011).--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
DEBUT Four short months after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, 33-year-old Iris Massey breathed her last, leaving behind her grief-paralyzed older sister, Jade, and equally devastated boss, Smith Simonyi, who runs a flailing PR management firm. Jade walks away from a successful career as an in--demand chef, and Smith is in danger of tanking his business with gambling debts. Enter sassy millennial Carl Van Snyder III, hired by Smith as an intern for Iris's position. Carl discovers a blog that Iris wrote as she was dying, with instructions to publish it, warts and all. Thus begins the quest to make Iris's last wish a reality. Told entirely in emails, texts, and blog entries, the narrative traces the collision between good intentions vs. privacy-triggered resistance, angry distrust vs. cautious contact for comfort, mixed with perfectly timed comedic moments of relief. VERDICT Debut novelist Adkins brilliantly captures the rhythms and cadences of the epistolary format in the digital age through a delightful cast of quirky, imperfect characters, both dead and alive. Tart, sweet, poignant, and rich with humor; completely irresistible. [See Prepub Alert, 8/27/18.]-Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann -Arbor Dist. Lib., MI © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
