“When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.”
“Truth is beautiful, no matter what the truth is. Even if it's scary or bad. It is beauty simply because it's true. And truth is bright. Truth makes you more you.”
“There are a lot of human experiences that challenge the limits of our language,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that we have poetry.”
"You might want someone else to save you, or you might want to save someone so badly, but no one else can save you, not really, not from yourself."
Reading Love Letters to the Dead was a poetic and painful journey into one girl's fight to keep living after her sister dies. What starts as an English assignment to write to someone who has died becomes profound as Laurel pours out her worries and hopes in letters to famous dead such as Kurt Cobain, Amelia Earhart, and Janis Joplin. As she deals with the emotional fallout caused by her sister's death, she must face the terrible truths surrounding it that continue to haunt her. At the same time, she must navigate starting high school, finding new friends, and falling in love without the advice of her beloved older sister. Filled with quotable lines (see above) and powerful poems from the masters, this is a book whose story and language you will savor long after you finish the last line. Reminiscent of Chobsky's Perks of Being a Wallflower, fans of that novel should definitely pick up this one.