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The Mailbox (2010)

by Marybeth Whalen(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0781403693 (ISBN13: 9780781403696)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

David C. Cook

series

Sunset Beach

review 1: I looooooooved this book ! It remind me of Nicholas Sparks meet Elin Hilderbrand , the sun , the smell of the beach , the pier, the sand , ugh love it !!!!! I took me two weeks to finished it because of my crazy days (kids, school, hubby, the house etc) and I didn't want this book to end !!! I was always looking forward to read Lindsey's letter after each chapter . I read Marybeth put more letters in the original version and they decided not to which I think was perfect.
review 2: While this book didn't "wow" me, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it actually was. I was interested right from the very beginning, and I found myself not being able to put it down after a certain point, although it was a pretty quick read. The whole mailbox part of the plot w... moreas so intriguing to me — and I love that it's actually a real thing in North Carolina! For me, Lindsey was such a relatable character. Still haunted by a teenage summer love affair that happened when she was fifteen, Lindsey tries to move on with her life while dealing with two children and a recent divorce from a cheating husband. When she shows up for her annual beach vacation to the town where her old ex-boyfriend still lives, things get complicated when she realizes that she is finally free from the shackles of marriage that have stopped her from pursuing the relationship that she's secretly missed for the last twenty years. Although I've never personally had a summer love like Lindsey, I've been haunted by past relationships, as I'm sure many people have.One of the things that made me like this book so much was how it had an aspect of mystery to it. Who was the person that she had been writing to at the mailbox for all of these years? Would she ever find out and be able to connect with this person? There were also a few surprising moments in the novel that I really didn't see coming. Usually chick lit books don't have that aspect to them, so I really enjoyed that there were some twists and turns that I didn't see coming.There were two aspects of this book that I didn't like, though. First of all, on the ebook version, for some reason, the acknowledgements and a million reviews of this book were included right at the beginning. I've never had this happen to me with an ebook before, and it was super annoying. It wasn't until 2% into the book that the actual first chapter began!The second thing is that this book had a huge religious component. As I've said before in my reviews, I'm not a fan of religion being in books, especially when it's done like this. We find out that Lindsey is actually Christian about a third of the way into the book, when she realizes that she wants to reconnect with God as a way of dealing with her divorce. She starts talking about how she got interesting in religion, and speaks about the mailbox as possible having some kind of spiritual connection with God, and she begins to constantly read her Bible and her "devotional" book. Religious stuff in novels are fine, but only when it's clearly in the "Christian" genre or whatever. I felt that the religious stuff was really random and didn't fit with the plot. It was completely irrelevant and unnecessary. If all of it had been cut out, the book would have made just as much sense and, honestly, would've been so much better. Personally, I don't think that it's fair to bombard readers with "God" stuff in a contemporary novel that doesn't tout itself as being Christian literature, especially when there's a LOT of it, and it's not immediately clear within the first few pages that there is a religious element. I just don't appreciate it and it really didn't belong in this book. Those two things aside, I really, really enjoyed reading this book. I stayed up late to finish it because I could not put it down, and I absolutely loved how it ended. While I thought that the ending was kind of obvious (which is fine, because it's the norm in chick lit), the way that the author brings you to the ending is all but "the usual." less

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