Book Review: 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson is a modern day coming of age story. It centers around Virginia ‘Ginny’ Blackstone, a 17 year old girl who is given a letter in a blue envelope. The letter tells her to fly to London, but she can’t bring any crutches. What ensues is a fantastic adventure.
I found Ginny to be a likable, relatable main character. She’s awkward, nervous, shy, and unadventureous. She’s very similar to how I was while in school. I love that she finds herself in Europe. I love that she throws her caution to the wind and learns to come out of her shell.
13 Little Blue Envelopes was a quick and engaging read. I was engrossed from the very beginning. I suppose if you tallied my total reading time, this book took about four hours to read. It’s not because it’s short on content either, the pages just turned themselves. Not to mention, I was curious about the tasks inside each of the little blue envelopes. There was one part in the second letter which really grabbed me, it spoke to me.
“I have a crush on a building. I’d been there several times but never to work. I always knew there were offices in there, but that fact never penetrated, really. You don’t work in the Empire State Building. You propose in the Empire State Building. You sneak a flask up there and raise a toast to the whole city of New York.”
Tell me that’s not great writing right there. Go on, I dare you.
I finished this novel wanting to leave my hellhole home and mosey on down to Europe and be a nomad. Then I realized the college loan thugs would find me, and probably beat me up for skipping out on payments. It would be nice though to get to do all of the exciting things Ginny did.
While I was in the shower, the perfect drink for 13 Little Blue Envelopes came to mind. A root beer float. Root beer floats are basically soda and ice cream. This is a carefree drink. People who drink root beer floats aren’t busy calculating how many empty calories they are. They aren’t thinking okay, this drink means a brisk 30 minute jog. Hell no. To me, root beer floats represent living in the moment. There isn’t always a rhyme or reason to having one, but damn do they taste good.
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April (Books&Wine) – who has written 1065 posts on Good Books And Good Wine.
April is 24 years old. She is an educator. In her free time she can be found reading, working out, or eating junk food. She often wears her sunglasses at night.
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This book sounds like such a fun read. Definitely adding it to my list. I've always dreamed of just packing up and going on an adventure somewhere far away from my comfortable little nook in CA. When you live in one place your whole live, the rest of the worl looks so exciting …
I'm new to your blog and I just want to say I love how you compare books to drinks. That's so neat! And the fact that this one was a root beer float makes me want to read it more – I love the occasional float, so good.
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