"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’m writing to you because even though you’re not dead in the book, you’re fictional, which is similar to dead just because you don’t really exist in this world but you still live in our minds, and although you didn’t really write those letters, I can’t very well write to Ava Dellaira because she is, as of November 29, 2015, alive. I just want to thank you for what you wrote. I sometimes feel a lot like you, although I don’t have a dead sibling. It’s just that I have a hard time opening up to people and I feel like no one really knows me. A quote from your letters that I feel describes me is, “And as much as I was hiding from him, I guess a part of me also always wanted Sky to see into me-to know the things that I was too scared to tell him,” (pg. 285). This next quote describes how I wish the people I care for and who care for me would be like. “The line at the end that says, ‘Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands’ makes perfect sense to me. It means they can go anywhere inside you, because like the rain, like water, they can find places that nothing solid can pass through. It explains the way that Sky gets into me, into places that I never even knew were there. How he touches a part of me no one has ever touched. we both have secret places in us.” And finally, when I am having a bad day, and someone does something really considerate for me, I can’t help but start crying. This short quote kind of describes that. “Sometimes, the smallest gestures take up the most room.” Thank you for these quotes because they mean a lot to me.