Blake Austin - 9 Letters

Luke Cawley is a broken man. After his wife’s tragic death, he lost everything that mattered in the world. Now, his life is filled with hard days, harder nights, and a steady stream of alcohol and the wrong kind of women. Nothing helps.
Until the letters arrive on Luke’s doorstep.
Nine envelopes. Nine messages. Nine chances to find his way back.
Rae Goode is looking for the real thing. After fighting her way out of a string of bad relationships, she’s ready for something different–something true.
She meets Luke while piecing her life together, and right away she can tell that he’s different. Drawn together by fate and the desire to heal, Rae and Luke discover new ways to mend their broken hearts–one letter at a time.
Discover Blake Austin’s debut novel of loss, redemption, and ever-enduring love.

Comment: This is another book I can't remember why I decided to read. It probably was a recommendation in some site or blog I've visited. This is a story about loving again after a loss and I tend to be curious about how authors make the characters' journey from hurting to happiness again.

In this book we follow Luke Cawley, a young widow who can't seem to accept his beloved wife Emily has died. His life was on track but with her death he seemed to lose interest in things around him and he now lives a very sad life, especially because he can't seem to move on.

Things change hugely when Luke receives 9 letters one year after the death of his wife. From then on, he goes on a different path and starts to do different things from his recent usual.

Overall, this was a good enough story and I did like to read it for the most part. I think it take some talent to create a story around the theme of grief and it could be too easy to just play on the sadness and leave a HEA for the final pages. This story wasn't like that and the author did try to give us the impression Luke was changing gradually chapter after chapter or, should I say, letter after letter.

This had all the ingredients to work out amazingly, especially since the first letter Luke reads by his wife - which she wrote with the intent he would read each one only after reading the previous one and completing a certain task - advises him to get a rescue dog. However, the problem to me was another...

It's quite disappointing that nowadays NA or similar themed books just focus so much on the first person narrator. I feel this choice is so limitative and doesn't give the reader all the nuances we are supposed to get. I could still feel empathetic towards Luke and his grief but having only his thoughts for company make some scenes lose power and it can also be boring to not be able to see things from a different perspective. I can understand the trend but... why exactly does this really help the reader knowing things or feeling emotions strongly I can't tell.

The storyline, since it follows only Luke's actions, is pretty simple. With each letter, Luke does one more "task", some more difficult than others and the purpose is for him to move on, to think of Emily fondly but not in a desperate way. For that, he accomplishes certain things although some not as easily and he does let himself get slightly down quite quickly. Some emotions were well portrayed I thought, and could easily lead us to a specific state of mind. However, with each new situation, it was easy too to simply let go of the more negative thoughts.

As one could imagine, there are many lessons for Luke to grasp and to find another love while still remembering his past is one of them: you don't need to forget something in your past to enjoy it again with somebody else. Yes, this is not easy to accept and live with...

I did like some situations and how Luke used them to become a better person and all that but the focus was too much on Luke's thoughts and not as much on his dealing with them. That was the consequence and I felt a little emotion was lost in favor of drama.

All things considered, this book offered interesting ideas and scenes and I liked reading it for the most part but yes, some details could have been polished better and a third person could have been as intense when it comes to convey emotion without limiting our POV of everything.

Grade: 6/10