Book Review | Words in Deep Blue

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Title: Words in Deep Blue

Author: Cath Crowley

Format: Paperback (borrowed)

Pages: 273

Categories: Young Adult, Romance, Grief, Death, Books, Contemporary

This is a love story.
It’s the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets.
It’s the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea. 
Now, she’s back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal and looking for the future in the books people love, and the words they leave behind.

I picked this book up after reading a dystopian story that exhausted me (in a good way), not even thinking I’d really get into it right away. But I picked it up at dinner time and was done by like 10:30pm! And yes it’s a short book, but I read it so fast because it was beautiful.

It is a love story, but not only about romantic love. It’s the love between family, the love between Rachel Sweetie and her brother who died, Cal. Love lost between parents or friends, a secret love, a second chance love, or a not another chance kind of love. It broke my fricken heart because I am that person who’s trigger is basically stories about death and grief. 💔 But I don’t tend to shy away from books like these, I’m eager to devour them just to know I’m not alone in grieving.

This book, with the beautiful bookshop setting and its Letter Library – oh the Letter Library. ❤️ I want to encounter a letter library, what a beautiful concept to leave letters and notes in books. For me writing in a book is a no-no but I want to buy me a copy of Words in Deep Blue and write in it and underline everything that touched me in this book. That’s how much this book moved me.

The actual romance between Rachel and Henry seems like a typical teenage romance. It is a friends to lovers romance. But Henry is desperately in love with a girl named Amy, though his best friend Rachel is in love with him. Or was. There is a “letter” but it doesn’t get read at the right time due to certain circumstances, and then the moment seems lost as Rachel moves on. Her life takes a horrendous turn without Henry knowing any of it, in part because she did move on from him, but…still, it was sad and frustrating when they meet again. But I get it. I get where Rachel’s head space was at.

Now Henry….Henry. He seems like that lovable, nice guy who needs some direction, or a lot of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I’m glad he finds it in the end. I’m relieved they both do.

I love that this book was a love letter to “books” as well. Where would we be without the written word and how it binds us all together in ways unexpected. All of us view books differently and this one pierced my heart pretty deep. I cried. I loved it. And that’s it.