Review: Dear Emmie Blue (by Lia Louis)

 

My Rating: 4 stars

I usually don’t do sappy romances, especially ones with too much fluff and not much substance.  But I needed something lighthearted after a slew of heavy reads, plus I figured a bit of “sappy” would even be welcome given everything that has been going on as of late.  After hearing this book described on a podcast that I listen to, it actually sounded like something right up my alley in terms of a lighthearted enough story but with a serious element to it.  Now after finishing this one, I’m happy to say that it was just what I needed, but more than that though, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the characters were developed and also the good balance that the author was able to achieve between the lighthearted elements and the “serious” moments.  Nearly all the characters were endearing and easy to root for, though if I had to choose my favorite characters, they would actually be the side characters such as Louise and also Rosie and Fox.  I think one of the elements that made this story work really well (for me at least) was the chemistry between the cast of characters — the camaraderie between Emmie, Rosie, and Fox; the unexpected friendship between Louise and Emmie; also Emmie’s relationship with the Moreau family (Luke, Eliot, and their parents), etc.  

In addition to the character dynamics, I also like the way the writing flowed.  The entire story was narrated from the first person point of view (in this case, entirely from Emmie Blue’s perspective), which I will be honest in saying that I’m not generally a big fan of in fiction because, depending on how the author handles it, writing from first person sometimes throws off the flow of the story, especially when there is too much description.  However, in this instance, the first person narration (no doubt helped along by the fact that there was more dialogue than description) worked well, to the point that I was able to get into the story pretty much right away and breeze through it fairly quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit, even though the story was technically not very original — it was actually pretty easy to see how everything was going to pan out in terms of the plot (funny thing is that the ending scene I actually guessed within the first few chapters and it played out nearly identical to how I imagined it, ).  This is one of the reasons why I decided to keep this review brief and not delve too much into the plot, as there isn’t a whole lot more that can be said (outside of what is already mentioned in the book’s summary) without giving away the rest of the story.  

If you’re looking for a well-written, “feel-good” read during these current turbulent times, I highly recommend Dear Emmie Blue. Added bonus is that this definitely doesn’t fall into the “fluff” category— rather it does a nice job balancing “sweet” with “serious” and therefore brings an unexpected but greatly appreciated substance to the story.