“People don’t want to think about it.’ ‘I can see why,’ I said. ‘It makes my head hurt.’”

I downloaded this after reading Ellesfena’s review, and enjoyed it immensely. It’s an odd little book, but comes together beautifully at the end. I literally got goosebumps at the big reveal, when everything finally made sense.

“I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you’re gone and there’s no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It’s all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.”

Set in 1979, When You Finally Reach Me is about a sixth grader named Miranda, whose best friend Sal has suddenly stopped hanging out with her. Miranda flies a little off course without him, and this un-mooring worsens when she begins receives mysterious notes. Suddenly, all the strange things about her life seem much stranger, like the crazy man on the corner and the bullies down the street.

Miranda’s experiences as a sixth grader trying to make new friends feel so real and concrete as to make the mystery of the novel — the notes — that much stranger. Everything seems disjointed and unrelated until the end when all the storylines suddenly meet and leave you gasping. This review is intentionally vague — just go read it and report back!