
Death should never meet the young. But it did. Thanks to my brother, death made fourteen new friends that day. Maybe even fifteen, if you count Charlie.
At sixteen, Sam Macmillan is supposed to be thinking about girls, homework and his upcoming application to music college, not picking up the pieces after the school shooting that his brother Charlie committed.
Yet as Sam desperately tries to hang on to the memories he has of his brother, the media storm surrounding their family threatens to destroy everything. And Sam has to question all he thought he knew about life, death, right and wrong.
N. D. Gomes captures the subjects that Dear Charlie covers beautifully and painfully. Not only does the book delve into Sam's head, but Charlie's also. Sam has to recover from the ordeal, inside and out. His Parents are under scrutiny by the media, and also are grieving, causing an even larger wound in their lives. Charlie's actions cast Sam's life into a new one that forces him to change and adapt to a different way of life in the following times as he tries to heal emotionally and come to terms with the fact that his brother is gone and that things will never be the same.
Overall, Dear Charlie is a gripping, eye-opening YA novel that I wish I could put in everyone's hands. Our world has had some of the biggest disasters because of guns and I am thankful that in YA literature we have a new author to shine a light on the realistic aspects of day to day life in society. I wish that guns never existed in the hands of people who have no business using them or thinking they are entitled to them. Charlie, like many others who have used them, took a gun to school and its a heartbreaking subject, but N. D. Gomes writes it with strength, believable edge and with a memorable story to last a lifetime. Although I found it hard to get through at times because of the enormity of the realistic subject, there is no denying that Dear Charlie is a brilliant book from an amazing author to watch.
YA readers who like gripping books with realistic aspects.

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