Book Review - The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright

Title: The Wednesday Letters by
Author: Jason F. Wright 
Year: 2007
Page: 304
Genre: Fiction - Family

FTC Disclosure: Borrowed from the library

Summary (from goodreads.com):
Their story begins with one letter on their wedding night, a letter from the groom, promising to write his bride every week—for as long they both shall live.

Thirty-nine years later, Jack and Laurel Cooper die in each other's arms. And when their grown children return to the family B&B to arrange the funeral, they discover thousands of letters.

The letters they read tell of surprising joys and sorrows. They also hint at a shocking family secret—and ultimately force the children to confront a life-changing moment of truth . . .

First Sentence: 
Shortly after 11:00 P.M., Laurel slid under the maroon comforter and into bed next to her husband, Jack.

My Thoughts:

• A while back I asked if anyone has any "happy" books to recommend because my friend doesn't like to read sad books. Tea Time With Marce recommended this book (see her review here). I thought I'd read it too since I do like a good love story every now and then.

• I read this 3 months ago, and I took notes. But I had already forgotten a lot of the story/characters by looking at my notes because now I don't remember exactly what some of my notes meant! I need to take better notes... like who the characters were instead of just their names! 

• It was a fast read, but it also read like a Hallmark movie.  The twists and turns were quite contrived. But there was a mystery that was not clearly explained, or maybe I was to dumb to figure it out. I'll include my questions in spoilers. [SPOILER] in my notes, I wrote whether Rain's son was Malcolm or Nathan - did Rain get raped too like Laurel? It didn't go into details why Jack hated his twin brother Joe that much. The whole Malcolm/Nathan fighting over Rain was a bit predictable. [/Spoiler]

• The relationship between the mum (Laurel) and dad (Jack) was quite sweet. Their children though, Matt, Malcolm and Samantha, were not as likable - perhaps because there weren't a lot of character development for these minor characters. I wish we knew more about the neighbor Anna Belle as she seemed like an interesting character, or Aunt Allyson (though I now do not remember much about her at all)

• I thought this would be a more emotional and touching read. At times it got preachy, and perhaps had  a bit too much Christian reference (note I do not have a religion, and am not against religion. But I just don't like preachy books, regardless of what religion it is. I think the "lessons learned" or the message can come across through a story without being preachy).

• It was a cute idea to have the epilogue in an envelop (some reader missed that - so if you are going to read the book, don't forget to look at the last page / back cover, and look for the envelop!)

• I did like the title and the cover of the book. Very fitting and eye catching.

• The one thing I really did like about this book though, is that it did make me want to start writing my husband a weekly letter (or better yet, have him write me!) My husband and I actually met online (NOT on a dating site... those sites weren't even in existence then!) so we were like electronic pen-pal for a year before we met in person. We had a long distance relationship (I was in Australia and he was in the US, except the first year when I was an exchange student in Illinois, US) for 5 years before we got married. When I was in Australia, we saw each other once a year then, so we relied on email to communicate. I missed those days - well okay I don't miss the part about us being so far away from each other, but I miss his emails. Oh, those days when I kept refreshing my email to see if "You've got mail!" And how worried I was if I didn't hear from him each day, as my mind automatically thought that something bad happened to him.) 

Quote:

Time is a powerful cue. (p276)

Overall Rating:

2 Stars. I really liked the premise, but didn't quite like the delivery.



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