REVIEW:

 I’ve never read a book quite like When You Reach Me and it is certainly a new favorite. The story follows Miranda, a 6th-grade girl living in New York who “writes” the entire book as a letter to a person she doesn’t know. This person is leaving Miranda mysterious notes, knows things that a stranger shouldn’t know, and seems to be on a mission. 

The beginning of the book was very abrupt and confusing at first, what with the first-person narrator suddenly addressing an unknown “you” with little explanation. 

As the story Miranda tells the stranger unfolds, intrigue takes over and the book just sucks you in. We get a close look onto various aspects of Miranda’s seemingly-normal life, which is full of side characters which are so unique and fleshed-out that they nearly outshine Miranda herself.

 The complexities of friendship is a strong theme in this book, and even without the unexpected science-fiction factor this book has, it would still be an excellent story that readers could become invested in and relate to. 

It’s an engaging and fun book that will knock your socks off when the climax comes and all the little questions and threads of foreshadowing come to a head. 

WARNINGS:

Very infrequent language

TAKEAWAYS:

There aren’t many books which do not waste a single word. Yet another thing I loved about this book: no matter how ordinary it seems, no scene is truly ordinary—it has a purpose and a role to play in the narrative as a whole. When You Reach Me is a clean, clever, delightful, gripping read that I will keep coming back to. It gets five well-deserved stars from me.

 Reviewed by: Kara Lark