Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book reminded me of how much I love books, how much I love stories, how much I love words and how much I love book shops. It also reminded me of how awesome it is to connect people with their next favourite book (I love working in a library too!!)
Apart from reminding me of all of these things, I was brought into the world of Rachel who I absolutely adored and just wanted to give a really big hug to – so many times. Leaving her mum to go live with her aunt in the city where she grew up sounds like a good idea until she realises that she has been given a job in the local bookstore which is owned by the boy she once declared her love to – and never got a response. She is brave and kind and funny and she held onto her grief and kept it all to herself, until she couldn’t.
Henry, said boy whose family owns the bookstore is at many times, a total idiot (once you have read the book you will know exactly what I am talking about!) and I was scratching my head and talking to the book saying, “Henry you are so smart…. why are you being such an idiot…..” But he is also a loveable, goofy, book boy. He feels things deeply and is the best person to be on the sometimes never-ending feeling hunt for the right copy of The Walcott Poems. I know he will find it one day, he is not the type to give up.
And George, Henry’s amazing sister George. So tough and confident and snarky and yet so soft, innocent and breakable all at the same time.
Henry about George, ‘Sometimes I think she likes post-apocalyptic fiction so much because she’s genuinely happy at the thought that the world might end.’
I think it was George who finally broke my heart as I was reading.
I loved the Letter Library and am determined to find a way to develop one in my local library and I feel very good about being a reader who likes to underline passages and sentences and I can’t wait to start writing notes in books, leaving a piece of myself in them (I will try not to do this in library books though!)
This book was a whole lot of awesome. Family, friends, grief…. love and books. When I had finished reading and had wiped away the last tears and smiled at the memories, I immediately looked up TS Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, and then read The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock – what a great way to end.
* 8 August – first comments: Undoubtedly my favourite book of the year. My heart broke more than once and the words were those which I wanted to wrap my arms around and keep close.
Review to come soon.
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