When You Read This

October 15, 2018
Iris Massey may be dead, but her story isn’t over in Adkins’s endearing epistolary novel for the modern age. Before the events of the novel, Iris has died of cancer; prior to her death, she had maintained a secret blog about her health during treatment. After Iris’s former boss and close friend, Smith Simonyi, learns of the blog, he approaches Iris’s sister, Jade, about having the blog made into a book. Jade is not only opposed, but furious with Smith for wanting to reveal such private writing. After a rocky start, Smith and Jade eventually start corresponding about Iris, whom Smith misses so much he continues to “talk” to her over email. Jade, meanwhile, dedicates herself to researching a potential malpractice lawsuit against Iris’s doctors and an email-based therapist. Told entirely in email exchanges and blog excerpts, the novel follows Jade and Smith as they help each other move on after Iris’s death. Smith’s emails to Iris are realistically personal, like diary entries, and Jade’s initial defensiveness is an understandable coping mechanism. Although the format doesn’t allow the characters to come fully to life, Adkins’s debut is a touching, funny, and life-affirming tale.

September 15, 2018

After PR power Iris Massey dies from a terminal illness at age 33, friend and colleague Smith learns that in her final months she created a blog full of acute observations on a life cut short. He wants to publish it, but that will require the cooperation of Iris's despairing chef sister, Jade.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2019

DEBUT Four short months after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, 33-year-old Iris Massey breathed her last, leaving behind her grief-paralyzed older sister, Jade, and equally devastated boss, Smith Simonyi, who runs a flailing PR management firm. Jade walks away from a successful career as an in-demand chef, and Smith is in danger of tanking his business with gambling debts. Enter sassy millennial Carl Van Snyder III, hired by Smith as an intern for Iris's position. Carl discovers a blog that Iris wrote as she was dying, with instructions to publish it, warts and all. Thus begins the quest to make Iris's last wish a reality. Told entirely in emails, texts, and blog entries, the narrative traces the collision between good intentions vs. privacy-triggered resistance, angry distrust vs. cautious contact for comfort, mixed with perfectly timed comedic moments of relief. VERDICT Debut novelist Adkins brilliantly captures the rhythms and cadences of the epistolary format in the digital age through a delightful cast of quirky, imperfect characters, both dead and alive. Tart, sweet, poignant, and rich with humor; completely irresistible. [See Prepub Alert, 8/27/18.]--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2018
A vibrant epistolary collage with pieces of satire, romance, and family drama overlapping.With six months to live according to her oncologist, 33-year-old Iris Massey covertly, and with some degree of irony, starts an account on Dying to Blog, a visual blogging platform for the terminally ill. The irony stems from the fact that Iris and her boss, Smith, helped launch the platform with their small, struggling PR firm and privately (and mercilessly) made fun of it, inside jokes being part of the deeply companionable work relationship between the two. Most of the novel takes place after Iris' death, when Smith learns that she left him a printout of this blog for potential publication. Missing his colleague and hoping to fulfill her last wishes, Smith contacts Jade, Iris' somewhat neurotic, totally no-bullshit older sister, who is a joy to read. The charming quality of Jade and Smith's developing relationship--both combative and empathetic--is anchored by their grief and by sections from Iris' blog, which is strikingly self-aware and sometimes breathtakingly poignant, especially the sentiments rendered in charts and graphs. The book moves with the entertaining swiftness and abrupt tonal shifts of communication in the digital age, with particular thanks to Carl, the intern Smith hires following Iris' death: a millennial ex machina who juices up the plot with perfect self-importance and -absorption. But thanks to Adkins, even Carl has a (hint of) compelling backstory and a delightful arc.An excellent story that's condensed into a great example of the epistolary format: something that's thrilling to expand and decode while reading.

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Sarah Naughton deftly narrates this 21st-century epistolary novel, full of emails and blog posts, emojis, and graphics. The humor is spot-on as the story focuses on millennial intern Carl; his overextended boss, Smith, who is still grieving the death of his young secretary, Iris; and Iris's older sister, Jade. Naughton smoothly moves between Carl's snarky emails and Iris's thoughtful "Dying to Blog" posts. But so many characters (and canned emails) jumble the narration. Another miss: Iris's blog graphics are ad-libbed. A casual listen may turn into several rewinds to understand that Naughton is describing a picture that Iris has drawn on her blog post. Despite these small glitches, this is an interesting approach to an audiobook, and Naughton's performance makes the story worth a listen. M.P.P. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine