Synopsis:
Everyone at Ryder High knows what it means to have a teal envelope taped to their locker on the first day of the month.
Skye Turner came close to having one, but considering she and her boyfriend, Andrew Del Marco, had been dating for a week already, she couldn’t take it.
So she decides cheat the Secret Admirer system and divert the teal envelope to someone else.
Emilia Rosemary is just like every other girl when she gets her envelope— shocked.
But the envelope isn’t from a real Secret Admirer. It’s from Skye, posing as Emilia’s crush, Chase McNeill.
Skye and her friends develop a plan to have both Emilia and Chase surprised with the big reveal at the Homecoming dance.
But when Chase learns the truth, will the plans be ruined?
Will Emilia be upset when she finds out her friends deceived her?
Review:
Dear Emilia is book eight in the Love Notes series and it’s the one with the biggest change yet. The book isn’t told from the perspective of the chosen girl, rather a friend who diverts her secret admirer envelope to someone else. Sadly, this one wasn’t my favourite. It felt too weird to be reading one of these books not from the perspective of the chosen girl.
I liked Emilia, she seemed lovely, but you don’t really know anything about her. I did root for her and the person Skye and Andrew forge the clues from, but only because I was told I should. They had a few cute moments but you never knew what they were feeling and a big part of developing the connection for me is to know what the main character is feeling.
I did appreciate the twist though. It can get quite repetitive doing the same premise for every single book. Plus, after seeing Skye and Andrew shyly get together in the previous book, it was great to see them confidently together.
Something I found really weird about Dear Emilia is Spencer’s boyfriend (from one of the previous books) is never mentioned by name. He hangs out with them and obviously goes to their school so why don’t they talk to him? Annoyingly I can’t even remember his name because I didn’t mention it in my review for spoiler reasons. It’s strange, whenever you get interactions with characters from previous books, their boyfriends or girlfriends aren’t mentioned. Spencer even referred to her own boyfriend as “my guy”. So weird.
The chapters spent at the dance were so cute. They’re the only ones you get from Emilia’s perspective so they feel very important. Her narration didn’t feel very different from Skye’s despite them being polar opposites when it comes to confidence, but I’ll let it slide. These books are just fun, short and cute romances – I don’t expect much.
I’d say Dear Emilia has been my least favourite of the latter half of this series, but probably not my least favourite overall. I’m planning to read Dear Mya soon as I’m desperate to get to Max’s book (the first and only instalment that has a boy getting an envelope).
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