Review:
Title: This Is Not A Love Letter
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Author: Kim Purcell
Publishing: January 30th 2018 by Disney-Hyperion
Format: ARC
Source: Book Expo 2017
Genre: YA; Contemporary; Mystery
Date Read: June 2017
One week. That’s all Jessie said. A one-week break to get some perspective before graduation, before she and her boyfriend, Chris, would have to make all the big, scary decisions about their future–decisions they had been fighting about for weeks.
Then, Chris vanishes. The police think he’s run away, but Jessie doesn’t believe it. Chris is popular and good-looking, about to head off to college on a full-ride baseball scholarship. And he disappeared while going for a run along the river–the same place where some boys from the rival high school beat him up just three weeks ago. Chris is one of the only black kids in a depressed paper mill town, and Jessie is terrified of what might have happened.
As the police are spurred to reluctant action, Jessie speaks up about the harassment Chris kept quiet about and the danger he could be in. But there are people in Jessie’s town who don’t like the story she tells, who are infuriated by the idea that a boy like Chris would be a target of violence. They smear Chris’s character and Jessie begins receiving frightening threats.
Every Friday since they started dating, Chris has written Jessie a love letter. Now Jessie is writing Chris a letter of her own to tell him everything that’s happening while he’s gone. As Jessie searches for answers, she must face her fears, her guilt, and a past more complicated than she would like to admit.
Thoughts:
I first found out about This is Not a Love Letter this past spring when I was preparing for BookExpo 2017. While mapping out my list of books I was interested in, people who were going to be there and whom I wanted to meet, etc, I stumbled upon this title. From the moment I read the premise I was intrigued; I am attracted to mysteries that’s no doubt, but the young adult category seems to be missing the mark with me as of late. I was anxious to see if this one, which seemed to promise heartbreak, would change my tune about the genre. I ended up reading it rather quickly, among a slew of other BookExpo titles I devoured in June after returning from my trip.
The premise of the novel is what first engaged me, so it only feels right to begin there. Jessie, our protagonist and a girl living in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, opens This is Not a Love Letter with, well, the beginnings of a love letter. Quickly, Purcell establishes that Jessie is writing this not love letter to her boyfriend Chris, who is currently missing. The mystery of Chris’ disappearance and whereabouts cromprises the primary plot of the novel, with the occasional flashbacks to earlier parts of Chris and Jessie’s relationship.
Jessie proved to be an interesting character, but I felt as though a lot of her depth was chalked up to her “ignorance” coming from a small town and not being the “smartest”. Chris is described as being very worldly, having moved from NYC, but his characterization was difficult to picture because he was largely absent from the novel. While Jessie’s pain over his absence is very clear, and well written in terms of emotional descriptions, their relationship felt more flat than I would have liked. Perhaps if we had gotten to witness any of Chris and Jessie’s relationship before the disappearance, and not in the form of a flashback, I would have been able to picture their relationship better.
In terms of secondary characters, I was pretty disappointed with their role in the story. Jessie primarily interacts with classmates (including Chris’ friends and her friends), Chris’ family, and the police detective assigned to Chris’ case. I wish that Jessie’s own relationships with the people in her life (such as her best friend and her mom) were a more important part of the novel; their support (or lack there of) could have been a more primary piece of the puzzle.
The pacing of the novel was, in some ways, rather exhausting. The novel is spent entirely focused on Chris’ dissapearance and search. After awhile, this becomes very repetitive (especially when everyone but Jessie has lost hope). There were times when Purcell falls into the habit of telling where her audience could have more than deduced, which was a little disappointing. However, I was impressed by the way that the illusion of perfection in regards to Chris and Jessie’s relationship unravels as Jessie gets closer to the truth. In reality, it seems as though they weren’t really on the same page about what they wanted at the moment or in life, something that seems to be the bane of many high school relationships that I know. By the end of the novel, I was most impressed by the growth that I finally felt that Jessie had achieved, especially in regards to the resilience of human character that Purcell bequeathed upon her (credit that teenagers more than deserve but often don’t receive).
I was a little surprised by how explicit of a role race played in this novel, though I think that some of the nuances in regards to police brutality, as well as masculinity and mental health in the African American community, were missed by Purcell. This felt like a very surface level take on the issues that plague African American teens, especially in a region of the United States like the Pacific Northwest, and I would have appreciated more attention to the weight of these details.
Final Thoughts:
This is Not a Love Letter is a YA a novel with a lot of heart. Set in the gloomy Pacific Northwest, ripe with a seemingly endless mystery, Purcell’s debut novel works to capture the joys and heartbreaks of teenage love, and what happens when unforeseen forces interfere with it. In another iteration, This is Not a Love Letter could have told a more nuanced story in regards to racial tensions and mental health stigma, but in its current iteration it addresses issues from a perspective never touched before.
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