Dear Edward

A beautifully poignant tale.

How do you learn to carry on when you loose everyone you love in an instant?

Edward is the only survivor of the plane crash. Badly injured and having no memory of the crash he spends a long time in hospital recovering. His body heals but his memory takes longer to catch up. Slowly, with the help from a stranger, he pieces together what happens and learns to grieve and reconstruct his life.

Edward's story is full of sadness and regret but there is also light and happiness. A must read.

I liked this one even better than Hello Beautiful. Though the premise is unthinkable, it was handled well and interesting to get in the head of an adolescent male. God knows, however, what the fully developed brains of the pilots were doing!

I only made it to the second page of Chapter 2 and I had to stop reading - it felt like it was going to be to emotional for me to handle.

Very well done.

I've just finished this book that I started reading, really reading—lost in the story, lost in the wondering about what was going to happen next, lost in what this story makes me want to do now that I'm finished—this morning, and I'd like to start taking those actions provoked by reading this story—hugging everyone I know and love and telling them all that I love them and don't squander it all and then hugging them again...

I didn't think I was going to like this book; I was afraid it was going to leave me feeling depressed. Instead, I feel completed elated, in love with the world and all that's in it.

I knew the story was about a boy, the sole survivor of a plane crash, a crash that took the lives of his brother and his parents. We readers get to know the boy, of course, but we also are let into the eyes of the boy's parents and his brother and many of the people on the plane. They are a mix of people—some happy, some sad; some rich, some poor; some about to move forward, others retreating; some delighted with the way their lives have gone, others with regrets.

The book alternates beautifully between the story of the boy, who was Eddie and is now Edward, and the ways he deals with life after the crash, and the stories of the people on the plane before the crash.

It's not a perfect story; it's heavily weighted with optimism. I rounded up when I rated this book, maybe to encourage more people to read it so that it can spark more hugging and life-reflection.

There just wasn't much happening here. We never got fully inside any of the characters, even Edward, our narrator.

It was a surprising plot, carried out in a way that was, for me, erratic; sometimes moving and deep, and sometimes just rambling on.

Side note: Coincidentally, I finished this book exactly one year after it was published!

It's interesting how so many books that seem to be about death end up actually being about life. Dear Edward is both a tragic story about 191 plane crash casualties and the story of how the sole survivor of this crash, a twelve year boy, navigates life during the six years following.

Chapters go back and forth between the Flight and Edward's life. While I enjoyed reading the parts about Edward's

What can I say? This story of a single survivor of a plane crash was heartbreaking.

The young protagonist, Edward duh, was so wonderfully crafted. He was complex, while still having reasonable reactions to his world. It was his neighbor and best friend, Shay, who really brought out his personality. I think we could not have understood Edward if it was not for Shay.

I liked the snapshots in the plane from the alternating points of view of the passengers. That was a clever way to bring us into the aircraft. I also liked the letters. They were not overdone and well selected.

Read this book! (Although, not before you take a trip on a plane, for obvious reasons.)

12-year old Edward is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills his parents and his brother.

The book starts off in the hours before the plane takes off, as we are introduced to Edward and his family, as well as other people who boarded the same plane. At first it feels a little bit pointless, getting to know all these people who are going to die. It gets more interesting once the book starts switching back and forth between Edward's life in the years after the crash, and the moments leading up to the crash itself.

Ultimately it's a book about survivor's guilt and surviving the loss of your entire family. I felt it reached a quite satisfying conclusion, as well.

*3.5 stars

Great story. What happened to Edward was tragic. Edward lost his family in an airplane crash that also took the lives of all other passengers on that flight. Although the story was somewhat melancholy, I enjoyed knowing what Edward was thinking as he continued his life. It was interesting to find out the stories of the other passengers, and how their family and friends reached out to Edward. It definitely showed the different sides of people. Some are giving, some are greedy, and some have a difficult time dealing with grief.
I would definitely recommend this book to others.

Récit de lecture, comme une valse à quatre temps :

1) Le résumé m'a tout de suite donné envie de lire ce roman : Edward, un garçon de douze ans, est le seul survivant du crash d'un avion qui a fait 191 victimes, dont ses parents et son frère aîné.

2) Le début m'a bien plu : pas de mélo, mais une délicatesse dans l'expression des émotions, avec une pudeur bienvenue

3) La suite m'a parfois semblé un peu longue, avec des passages un peu convenus et peut-être un peu moins de finesse dans le récit

4) La fin m'a captivé et ému. J'avais même la chair de poule en lisant certains passages.

Je ne dirais pas que c'est un livre parfait, je pourrais lui reprocher une écriture parfois formatée comme on le voit souvent dans les romans américains, mais c'est très efficace. Le résultat est redoutable : un récit prenant, puissant, que l'on referme à regret.

This book made me cry; so many times we watched Edward go though having a family to losing it all in one moment. It was very heartbreaking to me, but also seeing all the people on the plane, meeting them, and getting to know each one of their stories while all-knowing they will eventually die.