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.

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

Iris is a thirty-something year old woman and just found out she only has six months to live due to a deadly cancer diagnosis. She works for Smith, who owns a PR firm. Once Iris passes away (no this isn’t a spoiler, it’s in the blurb), Smith finds a blog that she kept for the last six months of her life. His business is struggling and he thinks letting the story of his best friend’s journey be published can help a lot of people. However, Smith has to get the OK from Iris’ sister, Jade. Jade and Smith become unlikely friends and develop a relationship through the love they had of Iris.

It was an interesting format to read – compiled of emails and messages between main characters, it was hard to follow. However the underlying humour and messages were great and that’s what kept this book going for me. Better format would be appreciated though!

I quite enjoyed this, it was an ok read and the premise of the story was good. I don't get on very well with stories told through the medium of emails and text messages though, and I did find this a little annoying at times.

I am sorry. I could not get into this book at all. I persevered and kept reading but could not get into the story. I think the format was just not for me. Sorry.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Loved the book! At first slightly put off by format but that could be because I was on the Kindle BUT I persevered and I'm so glad that I did! A brilliant love story told through the medium of emails, messages and blog posts. Loved it! Really recommend!

Thank you to both NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review.
This book is written in very different styles. Emails, blog type general writing. I found it oddly a real fresh style . Due to the subject matter of death I expected it to be hard going but really it was the total opposite.

I adored this book! Whatever anyone has said about others, THIS is the 'Eleanor Oliphant' follow up I've been looking for! It is brilliantly funny - like, it made me laugh out loud in public funny. It is heartfelt and profound, impossibly sad and incredibly hopeful. The characters that interact throughout this book are fantastically drawn and I felt connected to each of them. They all had their own lives and struggles, made mistakes and struggled to rectify them. Ultimately, they were all connected by being people who the deceased Iris has affected in some way. This is formatted as a log of electronic communication - IM's, emails, blog posts. Emailing the dead? Cathartic. Blogging about your impending death? You'll still deal with trolls in the comments. Struggling with your grief? Message an online counsellor. This is a book which is a testament to the connections we make with other people and the changing ways in which we make, maintain and miss those relationships. It was brilliant..

I really thought that this book was going to be depressing. The story is about the PR firm that Iris worked for before she died trying to get her blog that she wrote whilst suffering from cancer published. I did not find it depressing at all. The story is told through emails, texts and blogposts between Smith and Iris’s sister Jade. The story was funny with some poignant moments. It was a really quick read and I would highly recommend it.

I was intrigued to read When You Read This. The book is written as a series of emails, texts and blog posts.

It’s a pleasant read that I skipped through fairly quickly. Thank you to NetGalley, Hodder and Stoughton and the author for the chance to review.

I wasn't too sure if this was going to be a book I would like or not but I absolutely loved it! Death can affect so many people from family to friends to colleagues to people who know the story. This is a great example of the impact this can have.

Iris is diagnosed with terminal cancer in her 30's. The book is a series of emails, blog entries and texts before and after her death. The main correspondence is between her sister Jade and her boss Smith. Much about their lives is revealed and of course there are regrets. Both funny, poignant and sad ( have the tissues ready!) This is a brilliant, original book. I read it in 1 sitting.

At first I struggled with this book. I personally find this kind of format - pages of emails - easier to read in an actual book rather than electronically. I find it works better on paper.

However I struggled on past those first few chapters and suddenly found myself in a very beautiful but sad story and wanted to go on reading long after the book ended.

If you’re struggling to read this persevere because it is worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.

Lots of reviews of this book are discussing how, at the beginning, it's a bit confusing and there's no real way to get into this book unless you dig your heels in and stick with it. Unfortunately, I just couldn't do that. Though the writing style is quite unique and has a really witty take to it, I think it could have done with a more conventional narrative style, so you don't end up just reading a bunch of random emails from people you know nothing about. I'm sure there will be a selective audience for it, but that audience isn't me.

Iris has died and the premise of this book is that we get to know her story via emails, portions of her blog, snippets from her conversations with her GP and texts.
I loved the idea, but, just struggled to maintain an interest as the book progressed.
It’s well constructed, but, with little narrative to ‘hook’ the reader, so, I found myself reading dispassionately, rather than fully engaged with the characters. Overall, a decent read.


Thanks to Hodder, Netgalley and the author for the opportunity to preview.

I enjoyed the book but I did find it a little bit confusing at first. I had to go back to read the description of what it was about to give me a clue as to where it was going. But after that it was really enjoyable and quite uplifting in parts. It's worth working your way through the beginning bit and keep on with it.

When I started this book it’s seemed a little strange and I wasn’t sure it was me. I was so wrong, it is a marvellous, funny, poignant and uplifting book. The characters are great, and the email exchanges between Smith, trying to run a business and keep his clients happy, and Carl, his impetuous and naive intern, continually sending information to clients which he shouldn’t, are hilarious.
As you know from the book’s description, Iris, who worked with Smith died from cancer at far too young an age, and wrote a blog whilst dying. This may sound morbid and sad, but it isn’t written about in a mawkish way. Iris’s sister is an important character in the book, and her mother and Smithks family both feature.
I highly recommend this book, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Well done Mary Adkins, I’ll be looking for other books that you’ve written.

Smith Simonyi and Iris Massey worked together for four years, during which time Iris left her husband at the altar on their wedding day. Smith, meanwhile, relied on Iris, but his attention was on making enough money to cover his mother's nursing home fees in Wisconsin, running the branding agency in New York and losing money gambling when the pressures got too much for him. He was devastated when Iris developed a terminal cancer and died at the age of thirty three. He was surprised too when he discovered that Iris had been writing a blog in the last six months of her life and her final request of Smith is that he gets the blog published as a book.

It's not just finding a publisher that's difficult for Smith: he has to contend with Iris's big sister, Jade, who works as a chef in a two-Michelin-star restaurant. Jade's not keen on the idea of a book being published, not least because there are references to herself in the book which she's not keen on. It's not that they're critical: it's more that Jade realises that she could have been more supportive of and more interested in her young sister. But Jade's got a lot on her mind too. The job's very stressful. Then there's her mother back in Virginia, who's not as stable as she might be, but then she never has been that stable. Iris and Jade's childhood was spent living in hotels and moving from town to town every few months. It develops resilience but creates nothing in the way of lasting friendships or the talent for them.

You're probably thinking that it sounds like a good story, but what's the USP? Well, it's written entirely in the form of communications between the main characters. We get emails, text messages, phone messages - in fact just about every form of modern communication except snail mail. It's an epistolary novel for the technological age and when I started reading this worried me. Few epistolary novels make it to publication for very good reasons: they're frequently more about form than function. The next worry was that this is Mary Adkins' debut novel: could a quirky novel in the hands of an inexperienced author live up to expectations?

Well, it surpassed my expectations with flying colours. From the subject matter you might expect that reading the book would amount to taking your pleasures rather too sadly, but I was delighted by the humour in the plot. It's gentle, subtle humour which makes you smile. I loved the emails from Jade's online therapist: there's a running gag there which caught me every time. Characterisation's great. I wasn't too keen on either Jade or Smith to begin with and I knew that Smith's intern, Carl, was going to annoy the hell out of me, except I began to understand why they were the way that they were, to like them and finally, to worry about them even when I'd long finished the book.

I loved the book and I know that it's one I'll return to before too long, to pick up on all the gems which I'm sure I've missed. I'll be on the lookout for Adkins' next book too. I'd like to thank the publishers for making a copy available to the Bookbag.

When I gave up on this book, deciding not to read more, I was amazed I made it to 11 percent of the book. Up until then I had been mainly reading fictional people's emails. Perhaps an interesting format, but not for me.