Book review: Dear Mr Knightley

[birdienl]

Samantha Moore grew up in foster care and learned to survive by hiding in books. In the company of her beloved fictional characters she feels save. After college and a failed attempt at a big city job, Samantha gets the opportunity of a lifetime when the anonymous benefactor who calls himself Mr Knightley offers her a scholarship to Medill School of Journalism. The only condition is that Samantha writes regular letters to Mr Knightley. Samantha starts her education, but finds out writing isn't as easy as she thought and neither is growing up. But when she starts making real friends in her classmate Ashley, fellow foster kid Kyle and famous novelist Alex Powell her life really starts to change.

I had really high expectations for this novel. It was all over the pages of my blogging friends in the last year and they only had good things to say about it. And let's be honest: a novel based on a literary classic (Daddy Long-legs), with a main character who loves classic novels: that is like catnip to any lover of these classics like me, right? But maybe it's dangerous to have such high expectations, because in the end I ended up liking the novel just fine, but not loving it and feeling somewhat dissapointed about this.

First, lets talk about the good! I did indeed love all the classic literature references. If you know and love Austen, Brönte, Gaskell etc., this book immediately feels familiar. I also loved Samantha's friendships with the teenager Kyle and her classmate Ashley, it was nice to see those relationships developing and seeing Samantha open herself up more and more. And who can not love Alex, he was just amazing: sweet, intelligent, funny, basically a dream guy. I really liked the scenes of him and Samantha hanging out together, getting to know each other. I liked how Katherine Reay let the relationship develop gradually, so often, even in Christian fiction, relationships move forward at breakneck speed, this was a real good chance in that respect.

So, why didn't I love this novel then? It was not the story itself, but the way the story was told: through letters. I had such a hard time suspending my disbelief that Samantha who was so closed and guarded, would write such detailed and intimate letters to someone she doesn't even know. In the book an explanation is given: Mr Knightley promises he would never write back, so Samantha feels save in that. But even so, he would still read them and I can't reconcile that with Samantha's character. I mean, she wrote about her first kiss to basically a stranger! And her benefactor nonetheless. It is, I think, a more general problem with letter novels, that the letters have to be made more detailed then they would be in real life for the story to be told. But still, I didn't have this same problem with Daddy Long-legs, maybe because the heroine there was younger and mostly wrote about less personal things? Another thing that bothered me was the ending, it felt really rushed after Alex's secret came out. I wished Katherine Reay had given Samantha more time to process all that.

I'm still very curious about Katherine Reay's next books though, because I think her story ideas are great. I actually already bought Lizzy&Jane as an e-book!

If you've read this book (and I know quite a number of you have), what were your thoughts about the format and how it impacted the story?

Comments

[ever-maedhros.livejournal.com]

Sounds like quite the charming premise! But, yes, it does sound rather strange that a reserved character would record personal things in a letter unless explained in an understandable way. I've never read Daddy Longlegs--looks like I'll have to add that to my list on Goodreads. :D

[birdienl.livejournal.com]

Daddy Long-legs is such a great book! I didn't read it until last year myself (actually because I wanted to read it before I read this novel!), but it was so funny and charming.
It will always be difficult to adapt a classic novel to this day I think, but I definitely applaud Katherine Reay for trying.

[ever-maedhros.livejournal.com]

Hee, you planned it well, then, reading the classic and then the newer adaption. Writing a novel in the form of letters does sound so difficult. I think the only one like that I've read was Fanny Burney's Evelina and snippets of one of Jane Austen's earlier drafts of Sense and Sensibility.

[birdienl.livejournal.com]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a very good attempt at a novel in the form of letters, but my absolute favourite is More than Love Letters by Rosy Thornton which is a modern retelling of North and South through emails, letters, news paper articles etc and it's totally brilliant!

[ever-maedhros.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, a modern retelling of North and South? That sounds very fascinating! (I'll bet the author is either a) obsessed with Thornton and chose that as a pen name or b) given that name and just that more exited to have a broody but honest classic lit hero of the same name.)

[birdienl.livejournal.com]

Haha, it's a really big coincidence, but it's actually her real name. If you google her, you see she's also a lecturer at Cambridge University, so if that's her name on the university website, I guess it must be her real name? Maybe it's more common in the UK than we know?

[ever-maedhros.livejournal.com]

It's her real name? That makes it even better! I think you have a good point, Thornton must be more common than you or I would assume. :D