Dead Letter Office (Parish Mail #1)
Author: Kira Synder
Overall Rating
This book was interesting. The format took me back to my childhood days when I adored the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I have often thought over the years how wonderful it would be for those books to make a comeback only for us young adult to adult crowds. I am glad that this book did. I would suggest this book to be read for the younger age group, perhaps 14-18 years old would get the biggest kick out of it. I enjoy a good mystery and this book cleverly adds elements of mystery mixed with both present day and past. There is a splash of Voodoo magic and good old New Orleans spirit in this book and I just loved that! It was an enjoyable and light read for me.
Originality/Creativity:
Definitely a creative book because of the Choose Your Own Adventure element. I wish there would have been a few more choices and paths I could have taken but that did not take away from the essence of the book. What I love most about these types of books is that you can go back and read the book again and take the alternative choices you did not choose the first time. You will get a little more mileage out of this book then regular novels. The paranormal mix in this story just throws a little more bang into the mystery which I think added to the interest of the novel.
Complexity of Characters/Storyline:
The complexity of the story is not too extreme. As I stated above, this book could be read and enjoyed most by the young adult crowd so there is not too many twists and turns. The main character, Celia, is a young teenager that has just lost her father in the war, and uprooted to New Orleans with her mother to live near her father’s parents (rich, stuck up old white folks). There are old families of high reputation with stuck up offspring that Celia has to deal with, being as she is an outsider of “ill breed” which is their assumption based on the fact her mother is covered in tattoos, piercings and is a chef. Throw in some ghosts and a Voodoo witch best friend, and of course a teenage love interest (maybe a strange love triangle) and you have yourself a PG-13 Jerry Springer show. But not in a dirty trans-sexual baby daddy sort of way. In a good entertaining way!
Quality of writing:
This book is an easy read and I found it to be extremely easy to follow. Because it is not intended for older audiences, I found that there was not a lot of advanced vocabulary. I did not find an abundance of errors which if you know me, really sets me off if the book is riddled with screw ups. Like I said, an easy read.
Action/Suspense:
When it comes to books, movies, hell life in general, I like action. I can take extreme suspense non-stop until the end. I didn’t find that there was a whole lot of adventure that got my blood pumping, but there were some good scenes in there. There was enough to hold my interest through the book. I could have taken some more, but I’m not complaining about this book. That is why I labeled it as an easy read.
Would I recommend this book? Sure. I would recommend it for young teenage to adults ages 14-18 years give or take a few years. It has a great mix of supernatural, southern magic, and mystery. And you can’t really go too wrong with a choose your own adventure book.
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