REVIEW: 'Dear Emmie Blue' by Lia Louis is the sweetest book I've ever read and I insist you read it too

the only book to ever give me shivers when reading an epilogue

Some books burrow deep within your soul. Like a good cry or a hug from a friend you haven’t seen in years, they just feel like home. For me, Dear Emmie Blue was that kind of book.

If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. Despite being from a major publisher and this being author Lia Louis’ sophomore release, it took me going down several Reddit rabbit holes to find it. I was on the hunt for something hyper-specific (I won’t tell you what so as not to spoil it), and boy, did this one deliver.

At sixteen, Emmie Blue stood in the fields of her school and released a red balloon into the sky. Attached was her name, her email address… and a secret she desperately wanted to be free of. Weeks later, on a beach in France, Lucas Moreau discovered the balloon and immediately emailed the attached address, sparking an intense friendship between the two teens.

Now, fourteen years later, Emmie is hiding the fact that she’s desperately in love with Lucas. She has pinned all her hopes on him and waits patiently for him to finally admit that she’s the one for him. So dedicated to her love for Lucas, Emmie has all but neglected her life outside of this relationship—she’s given up the search for her absentee father, no longer tries to build bridges with her distant mother, and lives as a lodger to an old lady she barely knows after being laid off. And when Lucas tells Emmie he has a big question to ask her, she’s convinced this is the moment he’ll reveal his feelings for her. But nothing in life ever quite goes as planned, does it?

Filled with heart and humor, Dear Emmie Blue “beautifully captures the heartache and frustrations of carrying our teenaged selves with us wherever we go” (Anstey Harris, author of Goodbye Paris) that is perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Evvie Drake Starts Over.

I genuinely felt like Emmie was one of my friends. We care so much about her journey that we root for her when she’s in love with her engaged best friend, when she’s overcoming a high school trauma, and when she’s falling in love in new and exciting ways. Every stretch of the journey has us along for the ride, and through everything, I just wanted to squeeze her hand and tell her it would be alright.

“I’m thirty years old, and it’s safe to say that at this precise moment I definitely do not know where I am going.” -Dear Emmie Blue

A few other things set this apart for me:

Sweet not spicy — too much spice is boring to me. I think it takes an insane amount of skill to write sex scenes, but when it becomes a focal point I lose interest. This book has zero spice but all the heart and I’ll take that over steam any day.

Side characters I cared about: The friends in Emmie’s life are such an integral part of this book! They have their own mini-plot line and I adored them! Especially in the audiobook, they really come to life. I’d 100% read a spin off featuring Rosie. I was 100% picturing Vod from Fresh Meat while listening.

“Rosie has made dinner for later, a curry that smells like coconuts, something she said her dad makes when she's run down or sad.
"It works. I give less of a shit once I've got a bowl of this baby. My nan's works the best though. Fuck knows what she puts in hers. Men's souls probably, and rightly so.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

Romance + Women’s Fiction: This book toes the line of Women’s Fiction and Romance and that’s my kind of book. I tend to get a little bored with a lot of romances because the character development just isn’t there. Which is ok! I understand when people open a romance book they’re mostly looking for the same feeling I get when I turn on a Hallmark movie (and I LOVE Hallmark movies) but for me, I want my romance AND I want a healthy character arc for the MC. This book delivered on both.

“A nice three-bed semi, a family, and someone to love you. You have all three now, if you just stop and look.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

Slow growth: Emmie’s growth felt plausible to me. It was slow, and not at all dramatic, but it was there. It felt very much like how it would happen in real life, and everything felt purposeful rather than just there for the plot. Speaking of:

Plots that felt relevant: I feel like a lot of books have ambling side plots that are meant to add depth but mostly just seem to detract from the story I’m there to read. These ones made a lot of sense to the growth of the MC and the romance, and I really enjoyed them on their own. Any one of them would have made for a great short story.

“Because I know, deep down, I am made of strong stuff. Rebuilt with it, at least, the way we all are, over the years, with age and experience, skin thickening, heart softening, patched up double in the places prone to breakage. A sum of all the things that have hurt us, scared up, sheltered and delighted us.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

An epilogue that made me SWOON: I’m not usually a fan of epilogues. I don’t know why, but they usually just make me feel worse about the ending. This one was PERFECTION. I won’t spoil it for you, but it was the absolutely the right way to end the book.

So there we are! Short and sweet, very much unlike my review of Bunny by Mona Awad. Mostly I just want you to read this book. Especially if you like sweet romances, (Slowmances?) and want to feel like there’s a warm cup of milk flowing through you as you turn the pages. This book is that. And so much more.

Have you read Dear Emmie Blue? I would love to know what you thought. So far I’ve only met one other person who has read this so I need more people to discuss with!