Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Review: You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis


Title: You Have Seven Messages
Author: Stewart Lewis site
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Published: 9/13/2011
Publisher: Delacorte Press (Random House)
Source: Received from Book Divas for review
Challenges: Standalone Reading Challenge (hosted by Icey Books), and the Completely Contemp Challenge (hosted by Chick Loves Lit)

It's been a year since Luna's mother, the fashion-model wife of a successful film director, was hit and killed by a taxi in New York's East Village. Luna, her father, and her little brother, Tile, are still struggling with grief.

   When Luna goes to clean out her mother's old studio, she's stunned to find her mom's cell phone there—charged and holding seven unheard messages. As Luna begins to listen to them, she learns more about her mother's life than she ever wanted to know . . . and she comes to realize that the tidy tale she's been told about her mother's death may not be the whole truth.
Basic Summary:
Luna finds her mother’s cell phone a year after her sudden death, and finds seven voice mail messages. As Luna listens to the messages and meets the people behind them, she learns that her mother had many secrets and may have been cheating on her father. Is Luna willing to forgive and forget for the ones she loves?

The main theme of the book seemed to be forgiveness or learning to forgive. Whether Luna could forgive her dead mother for past wrongs, her father for keeping secrets, and her boyfriend for cheating on her.

Characters:
Luna wasn’t very memorable for me. She seemed have a more breezy and optimistic perspective. She had some interesting insights, but also some weird and downright preachy ones. Her younger brother, Tile, was really funny. I ended up liking him much more than his sister. And I can’t say that I cared for Oliver, the love interest, either. When weird and odd things happened between them, he didn’t really explain his actions much. I didn’t like that Luna just accepted everything he did either.

Plot and Story:
Maybe I’m alone in thinking this, but the official synopsis seems to imply that the main focus of the story is the mystery surrounding the seven messages on her late mother’s cell phone. But that part of the story really takes a back seat to all the other happenings in the book. For example, Luna’s romance with Oliver. The rest of the book was a lot rest interesting to me and I think I would have liked it better had the mystery of the messages been more of a focal point.

Overall:
I was bored reading this book. If I had not had to review it, I probably would have put it down. It had good intentions but for me it was ultimately not worth reading. All in all, You Have Seven Messages get a rating of 2.5 of 5.


3 comments:

  1. you have seven messages was the best book and i disagree with you.

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  2. I don't know what you are talking about of course she might have been "preachy" but honestly i have discovered that peoples thoughts tend to be that way especially those of the quiet person * hint hint Luna*. I understand that you review many books and probably get sick of it from time to time but i believe that this book had a simple enjoyment to it. It had a complexion of nostalga, young love, mystery, and basic descriptors that might not be familiar to the everyday Joe. This book offered us a look into the mind of a very uniqe character and this book caused me to actually rethink some things in my life and i believe it deserves much more than a 2.5 out of 5!

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  3. i don't agree with you because the book was not supposed to be mainly focused on the mother. the author purposely wanted the readers to find that the main protagonist was trying to find forgiveness. the book was a mystery because Luna was looking for herself. she wasn't looking for the answer about her mother because she already answered that question herself in the beginning of the book. i feel sorry for you because you didn't fully read the book. In Fact you didn't understand it at all.

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