Dear Edward seemed to pop up everywhere I turned. When this happens, I usually don’t read those books right away because they have been so hyped up that I’m ultimately disappointed when I read them. Unfortunately, that held true with Dear Edward.
One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Cue the tears, right? Well …
When I began reading Dear Edward, I expected to be sucker punched by emotion. Edward loses his family and is the sole survivor of a horrible plane crash, but I didn’t shed a tear while reading this book! Maybe I wasn’t supposed to?
Readers alternate between seeing what the flight was like for Edward and the other passengers and Edward’s life after the crash. This way of telling the story didn’t work for me. I’m not sure if a chronological telling would have worked either, but something was missing here.
Among the other passengers are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Sounds like an interesting cast of characters, right? They do sound interesting, but the time spent with these characters did not make me care for them at all … even though they died! I felt no connection or sympathy, nothing!
In closing, this book has good bones, but it just didn’t work for this reader. Maybe my expectations were too high? Maybe the hype had the opposite effect on me as usual? Whatever the cause, Dear Edward was an okay read but not one I would pick up to read again.
My thanks to the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book.
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewer: Jennifer
Title: Dear Edward
Author: Ann Napolitano
Release Date: January 6, 2020
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