I liked the character development and the scavenger hunt in this story. And while I enjoyed this dark mystery, I found it to be slow at times.

I liked the author's style, and the mystery of the book was kind of fun, but the characters were so off putting to me that it dampened my enjoyment overall of this book. I don't think I'd recommend this book to others but I'd consider reading another book by this author.

It's the story of a twin who is called back home after her sister dies in a fire. But dead-twin has been known to mess with alive-twin in the past and appears to be doing so with emails and a scavenger hunt left behind. Is dead-twin really dead? Was it suicide? Murder? Ultimately, dead-twin didn't become a sympathetic character for me until long after I quit caring about her. And alive-twin (and the rest of the family) were so screwed up and selfish that I didn't care about them either. I wasn't surprised by the ending, but I wouldn't have been surprised by other endings either. Overall, the book got so tied up in the whole conceit of the A-Z puzzle that it lost its heart.

Loved this book, I read it in one weekend. It definitely kept me guessing

couldn't put it down

** A Copy of Dead Letters was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **

Just a quick browse of the reviews before I post mine makes me wonder if we even read the same book. I found that this book was slow to start, the use of big "uncommon" words made it some work to read and the plot didn't make me want to keep picking up my Kindle.

I'm well read, but the use of the larger words made it that I had to keep pausing to define to make sense of the sentence; then re-reading the sentence to figure out the context of what was going on, was a put-off for me. It felt like at times there was a larger word used when really the simpleness of using "family" (for example) would've sufficed. When I read I like to enjoy it, I make sure I carve out time during my busy schedule to read, and I felt like with the beginning of this book I had to work to read it.

The plot really didn't start to get interesting to me until the 80% in mark. Then I wanted to know what Zelda was really up to, how this was all going to pan out and have some dramatic twist that I REALLY didn't see coming.. and then it didn't. I'm not sure I felt/saw the suspense during the entire book, it wasn't a huge climax at the end, it was rather lack luster and kind of how I saw it ending.

I hate giving books a 2, because I feel like there are always good things you can find in a book, something you enjoyed, but for me this one fell flat. I also hate that this is the first book I received from NetGalley and I didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping to. Maybe I'm missing something.. If I did, let me know!

Hard to follow at some points, but interesting storyline. This is the kind of book you need to read twice to fully understand.

I wasn't hooked in this book. It was interesting enough to want to know how it ended but I didn't feel the need to compulsively read it. I was a bit disappointed in the end, though it was realistic. I think I'm most like Ava looking for deeper meaning where there aren't any.

This was a random Libby pick up for me a few weeks ago! I was in a thriller/mystery mood and this was definitely an interesting one. This story follows Ava who’s estranged twin sister Zelda is suspected to of died in a barn fire. They have not seen each other in years after a fall out so coming back was hard for Ava. We have a lot of flash backs of childhood memories of the twins and their difficult home life growing up. Dad left, and they were left with their mom who had dementia. Ava was able to get out, but Zelda stayed to take care of their mom and the family business. This was an interesting story but it felt very slow at times. I loved the alphabet pattern and the ending definitely didn’t disappoint.

I don't really know what to say about this one. It wasn't really all that suspenseful, which is strange because the idea was fantastic. What really made it a struggle for me is the fact that I couldn't stand ANY of the characters, especially Ava, the protagonist... Really disappointing. And that's all I have to say about that.

The fine print: received ARC from NetGalley.