Dead Girls Don't Write Letters - Hardcover

Giles, Gail

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761317279 ISBN 13: 9780761317272

Publisher: Roaring Brook, 2003

Synopsis

Fourteen-year-old Sunny Reynolds is stunned when a total stranger shows up at her house posing as her older sister Jazz, who supposedly died out of town in a fire months earlier.

About this title

About the Author

Gail Giles, author of Shattering Glass and Playing in Traffic, is a native Texan who now lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Reviews

Grade 9 Up-Sunny's older sister has been presumed dead for several months when Sunny receives a letter from Jazz explaining that she was away working in a repertory theater when her apartment burned to the ground. Then Jazz, or Not-Jazz as Sunny calls her, returns home. Her mother has become addicted to sleeping pills and Dad has fallen back into the bottle since his daughter's "death." Sunny and her father soon realize that the young woman is indeed not Jazz, even though she knows a great deal about their family history and secrets. As Sunny investigates, she begins to discover who this imposter is and how she knows so much about their family. This novel is not of the same quality as Giles's Shattering Glass (Roaring Brook, 2002), and the ending is truly a bolt from the blue. Readers' reactions may range from shock to frustration to confusion to anger that they've invested time in this book. The plot is intriguing, but the ending is just too unclear.
Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WI
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 6-9. In Shattering Glass (2002), Giles gave readers a huge surprise at the book's beginning. Here a major twist, one of several, comes at the end, though it raises more questions than it answers. Ninth-grader Sunny is not entirely sad about the death of her 18-year-old sister in a New York apartment fire. Jazz's perfection has been a thorn to Sunny, but it was all that sustained their depressive mother and alcoholic father. Her death has pushed both parents over the edge. Then one day, a letter from Jazz arrives, and soon after, Jazz herself returns, claiming she was away and only recently learned about the fire. But this girl isn't really Jazz, though she does resemble her and seems to know enough about her to assume her life. Both Sunny and her father realize the truth; Mother seems not to. For a while, though, everyone is willing to have Jazz alive. This is a page-turner with sharp dialogue and psychologically intriguing viewpoints. Readers are continually kept off balance as Jazz and her motives change like shapes in a fun-house mirror. But when Sunny asks her final question, "What have I done?" readers might wish for a clearer answer. - Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Roaring Brook
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761317279
• ISBN 13: 9780761317272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144