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Amelia Griffin loves the Orman Chronicles, a magical series of books that have transported her to a faraway land every time she’s opened their pages. They’re also special to her because she discovered the books the same day she met her best friend, Jenna. That was also the same day her father left her family and her mother basically checked out of life. Jenna and her parents welcomed Amelia into their home and made her one of the family.
When Amelia and Jenna graduate high school, they have their futures together mapped out, mostly thanks to Jenna and her take-charge personality. They are going to go to college together, and Amelia is going to study English and become a professor. But first order of business is the summer, starting with a trip to California to a book festival where the author of the Orman Chronicles will be in attendance. N.E. Endsley is famous for his popular books but also reclusive, so the festival is a rare chance to see him and have him sign their books.
But the festival doesn’t go as planned; Endsley calls off his appearance, and Amelia is crushed. And when she finds out that Jenna got to talk to the author while she was off in the restroom, she’s angry at her friend. Devastatingly, soon after, Jenna goes away on a study trip, where she’s killed in a car accident, and Amelia is left alone and shattered by her grief.
When a beautiful rare edition of one of the Orman books arrives at her local bookstore for Amelia, she is sure Jenna had something to do with it. She calls the store in Michigan, but the clerk has no answers for her. So Amelia goes off to Michigan — to solve the mystery, but also to connect somehow with Jenna.
She discovers a charming bookshop in a small town on a lake where the owner teaches piano lessons, and where the owner’s son is best friends with a boy who mostly stays to himself but pops in regularly to the store, mostly accompanied by a big dog. And that boy is N.E. Endsley. The six days Amelia visits become some of the most important and special of her life, and she has to decide how to move forward with her future, being true to herself and the memory of her friend.
Amelia Unabridged is a beautiful book about friendship and loss, about grief, about finding one’s way, and it is an homage to the magic of books and the power of reading. It’s set in a bookstore that any reader would love to visit, and it draws readers right along on the adventure that Amelia has lived over and over while reading the Orman books. Any of us who have been transported through the wardrobe into Narnia or via Platform 9 ¾ to the world of Harry Potter will know right away how Amelia feels. The setting is a paean to books and the story is a poignant one about love and friendship. My only quibble is that a lot of the time it reads more like a middle-grade book with the simplicity and style of the writing, though its main characters are 18 and 19. But I really enjoyed it anyway and loved especially that it’s clean reading. I can therefore heartily recommend it to anyone.
Rated: Mild. There are just a handful of uses of mild and moderate profanity, hardly any. Sexual content is limited to kissing. Violence is limited to a death from a car crash and two girls’ drowning deaths.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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