"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I know this already breaks the rules of the letters since you’re not dead, but what’s the good in writing to the people who can never read your letters? I just wanted to say thank you. Your story meant a lot to me and I’m grateful that it was shared, even though it wasn’t you who wrote it since it’s fiction.
Reading your story made me feel grateful for so many things. I am so grateful that my family are all safe and although they’re not all together I know I can reach them whenever I need to. I am also grateful that I am safe and healthy. I also struggle with feeling uncomfortable being myself even though I wish people knew the real me. Weird right?
I noticed a trend when reading your letters. The people you wrote to were broken souls. They were people who’d died tragically and suffered greatly although their lives seemed beautiful to everyone else. Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, River Phoenix and even May. Being adored by so many may seem like the most wonderful thing in the world but one look at any of the people in your letters shows you how unforgiving fame is. It also made me sad to see how pointless all these people’s deaths were.
I am a person of the opinion that extraordinary people live extraordinary lives and therefore seeing the way that all these wonderful people died so tragically and so pointlessly upsets me slightly. There is nothing extraordinary about dying of a drug overdose, or of a heart attack on the street, or even falling off an old railway line and into the river and it upset me that these were the deaths that these wonderful people suffered. Maybe I’m being presumptuous by thinking they were so great, but their work lives on long beyond them, as will your story.