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After some confusion about who Sam was in the beginning, Sam’s Letters
to Jennifer drew me in and I didn’t stop reading until I had finished the book. Such
tender wording brought tears to my eyes and there were many laugh-out-loud moments…the
kind
of moments an ordinary person can relate to.
Sam had fallen at her
home and was in the ICU at the hospital. Sam and Jennifer have always been close and best
friends ever since Jennifer was a little girl and spent summers at Lake Geneva with Sam
and Charles, her grandparents. Charles had died long
ago, and now Sam lay in a coma
and the doctors weren’t sure she would come out of it. Jennifer had already lost her
soul mate, Danny, in an accident and didn’t think she could stand to lose her
grandmother so soon afterwards.
Sam had left Jennifer a series of letters
telling about her life and the secrets she kept. The first letter ended with “The Truth
is…I never really loved Charles.”
One morning Jennifer is awakened by a
war-whoop and to the sight of a naked man racing toward the lake to jump off the dock and
into the freezing lake water. His name was Brendan Keller, and she would love him, and he
had a secret too.
Between Sam’s letters and Brendan, Jennifer learns to
live from the crack of dawn until she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. She learns
that if you’re going to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well
laugh about it now. She learns happy endings are hard to come by and that we are our
stories – make them happy ones. Most of all…be alive every moment of the day.
