When You Read This by Mary Adkins

I am really enjoying reading at the moment. I’m sure it has something to do with working in a school where literacy is encouraged amongst staff, students and teachers. I seem to be reading all of the time, which is brilliant! I’ve read quite a few books already this year and am going to smash my Goodreads target this month. My latest book is When You Read This by Mary Adkins, the cover really caught my eye and I was delighted to receive a copy from NetGalley to review.

Iris Massey is gone.
But she’s left something behind.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’s big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

I absolutely loved this book! I especially loved the style as the story unfolds via emails, texts, messages and blog posts. I also just loved the unsentimental way that life and death was dealt with. It’s a thought provoking book and although the tone is kept quite light, I couldn’t help having a little cry at the end when Iris died, even though you know that the book deals with the aftermath of her death.

When You Read This by Mary Adkins was published by Hodder & Staughton on the 7th February 2019. Thank you to NetGalley for the digital copy to read.