Book Review - Letters to Rosy

When I first got the email to review C. Ellene Bartlett’s Letters to Rosy, I jumped at the chance. Yes, I love the internet and email as much as the next person, maybe more and it has allowed me to reconnect with many people from my past, but there is just something special about writing letters. It may seem old-fashioned and impractical to modern generations (and no, I’m not that old). In an age where everyone is in a hurry, wants instant gratification and doesn’t have time to wait for the sometimes inefficient and increasingly expensive postal system, the thought of a book about two ladies an ocean apart who still connect through “snail mail” is delightful. That is exactly what Letters to Rosy is. It’s delightful and yet it’s also so much more. This isn’t your typical story and it’s not your typical compilation of letters. It's a story about friendship, mystery, kidnappings, forbidden love, obsession, and more.


Letters to Rosy starts out with a letter Rene in Germany writes to her childhood friend Rosy after decades spent apart. As teens Rene, Rosy and Mendy were the ‘terrible three’ who spent their teens years together in the small town of Bartsville, Georgia. Although they had lost touch with each other over the years, Rene and Rosy renew their special bond as they write letters back and forth, filling each other in on their lives and ailments and each telling a story from the past of someone they knew. By the end of the book you feel like you have lived vicariously through these women and you want to run to buy stationary and reconnect with your own long lost friends.

Once I started reading this book, I found it was not at all what I was expecting. Rene and Rosy take you on a rollercoaster ride. Building up the suspense and then leaving you dangling until the next letter arrives. Needless to say I read this book, in one sitting and in just over two hours. I could not put it down, like each of the women waiting for the next letter, I could not wait for the next part of the story. I had no trouble visualizing their postmen being afraid of being mugged every day in search of the next letter. You see, that is one of the things that makes this book so wonderful, it makes you feel. With Letters to Rosy, Bartlett has succeeded in making the reader feel a gamut of emotions. She makes you laugh when Rene and Rosy are writing back and forth and telling you about their postal carriers. She makes so sad when you hear of the family whose little girl goes missing and then the wife goes crazy with grief and ends up accidentally killing herself. She makes you anxious when Mendy and her daughter are kidnapped. She makes you anger, even a little enraged at various characters (sorry, can’t explain that with out giving too much of the story away). And she shocks you at the end with a few twist you don’t expect. The story of these two women and the stories they are telling to each other make you feel. When was the last time a book did that? I’m not talking about just getting caught up in a story, lots of books can do that, but this one really makes you feel. By the time, I finished this book I had tears in my eyes. For those of you who don’t know me that probably doesn’t mean much. For those of you who do, you know how rare that is. You see, I’m not one of those sentimental, cry at sad movies and stories kind of woman. I was raised to be tough. Although, as I get older more things get to me than they used to, I am not one to cry. I just don’t. So when something makes me cry, you can bet it has really moved me. This book is five out of five postage stamps.

To watch the trailer for the book, click here.

Come back on Friday, November 27th for an interview with Bartlett and a chance to win a letter writing prize package (a copy of her book, a leather bound journal, note card stationary set and a custom made pen).

This book was provided by the author.