Rating: ★★★★★
Growing up I always loved the idea of writing letters to someone and learning something new whether it be their life story, the city they live in or what they might be thinking as I write these letters. What doesn't help is I've seen countless Hallmark films that showcase two lovers from two different centuries writing to each other, the Lake House movie, and Felicity's voice letters to her friend. Unfortunately I live in 21st century where most of my generation do not even know how to write a letter let alone mail it thanks to the invention of email.
I found this book to be marvelous in sense that you get to be someone who is intruding on other peoples mail. I could definitely see this book as a novel but I love that it is full of postcards and letters, with beautiful designs, and an intriguing story leaving me wanting more. I will definitely continue reading this series. We meet Griffin, a very lonely guy who is a post-card designer living in London who gets a post card one day from a woman named Sabine. She lives in the South Pacific Islands known as Sicmon Islands and writes to him telling him that she loves his work particularly this one post card with a fish coming out of a broken wine glass.
Immediately Sabrine attracts Griffin and he becomes curious as to how she knows about that particular post-card because he has never shown it to anyone he knows. At first she doesn't want to scare him and avoid his question but then tells him that she has the power of telepathy and can always see him draw without seeing his face. She had spent countless years seeing his beautiful drawings and yet never could discover a clue about his name until she read about a self-designer who makes post cards and featured a few of his illustrations that she recognizes.
During the course of the story you get to see this interesting love story developing and at the same time we see a different behavior in Griffin. From being lonely and depressed, he starts to change and become angry and losing control of his emotions. The ending brings up a point of view that I hadn't thought before which blew my mind in epic proportions. Towards the end, Griffin sends Sabine letters telling her to stop writing and that everything is just a figment of his imagination, and that she is not a real person. But in the last letter she tells him that he can quit this romance on a whim and that if he is depressed without her then she is willing to visit him. Then later we discover that his post-cards had been pinned to the ceiling and Griffin is missing leaving an empty studio.
For such a short book it brought out a lot of questions for me when it comes to Sabine and I am really curious what will happen in the sequel. I found this to be such a creative way of using different forms of art to showcase a beautiful storytelling. While reading this I felt like I was the one receiving the letters and I believe when someone writes you a letter they are dedicating the time and thought towards what they should write and the emotion they imprint on the page follows on with their words. I fell in love with the story and the characters and I cannot get enough of this love story.
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