Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Laurel started writing to Kurt Cobain, Janice Joplin, Judy Garland, Amelia Earhart, and Amy Winehouse as a way to be closer to her sister. It started as an English assignment: write to a famous dead person. They all died too young, and that's what happened to her sister. Everyone wants to know what happened that night on the bridge, but she can't tell them. She hardly knows herself. What would she say anyway...that she couldn't save her own sister?

High school is a wasteland without May. Everything is dimmer, lackluster, washed out. Laurel is lucky enough to find a few friends that help her get through the days. She knows that she has to maintain a certain semblance of normalcy or her dad and her aunt will flip. Her mom has taken off for an undisclosed amount of time to "find herself" - whatever that means. Doesn't she know that Laurel needs her?

So she talks to dead people, and they help her deal with the fact that her world is upside down. Going to a new school was supposed to help. She wouldn't be the girl who's sister died. She even manages to attract the attention of a boy. He knows who she is, or at least he knows who her sister is...was...

Sky is her lifeline, and it seems like he could be the one to pull her out of the tailspin she's in, but is that really fair? Can she put that on him, and does she want to? He keeps asking what's wrong just like everyone else, and she can't tell him. At some point, it's too much for him. Just like her friends: Natalie and Hannah. Natalie only has eyes for Hannah, but Hannah can't seem to handle their relationship in public. She flaunts her string of boyfriends in front of Natalie to a point where is seems they can't go on.

Can Laurel find a way to let go of the past before it destroys all of her relationships? Can she find a way to forgive her sister and move forward?

*Library Link*

"When we were walking to the parking lot, Natalie said to Hannah, 'I made the tulip that way, I made it a painting, because now you'll always have it. It can't wilt or die.' Natalie had taken what's ephemeral and turned it into something that Hannah can keep. Hannah looked at Natalie like she was trying to make herself understand what it means to have someone love you like that.
  At least that's what I imagined, because I know that it can be hard to believe that someone loves you if you are afraid of being yourself, or if you are not exactly sure who you are. It can be hard to believe that someone won't leave," (Dellaira pg. 145, 2014).

If you liked this, check out:
Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Dellaira, Ava. (2014). Love Letters to the Dead: A novel. New York : Farrar Straus Giroux.