A sad, sweet story that deals with grief and love. The descriptions of Amelia’s family breakdown are realistic and heart breaking, and the contrast with Jenna’s stable family all the more bittersweet. A coming of age novel that centres on bookishness in a lovely way.

Amelia Unabridged

A Novel

By: Ashley Schumacher

St. Martin’s Press

Wednesday Books

Teens and YA

Publish Date 16 Feb 2021

100 Book ReviewsProfessional Reader

I would like to Thank both NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

Good Reads Synopsis:

Sparks fly between two teens as they grapple with grief, love, and the future.

Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They’re the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia’s father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It’s the perfect way to start off their last summer before college.

In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong. When Jenna gets a chance to meet the author and Amelia doesn’t, the two have a blowout fight like they’ve never experienced. And before Amelia has a chance to mend things, Jenna is killed in a freak car accident. Grief-stricken, and without her best friend to guide her, Amelia questions everything she had planned for the future.

When a mysterious, rare edition of the Orman Chronicles arrives, Amelia is convinced that it somehow came from Jenna. Tracking the book to an obscure but enchanting bookstore in Michigan, Amelia is shocked to find herself face-to-face with the enigmatic and handsome N. E. Endsley himself, the reason for Amelia’s and Jenna’s fight and perhaps the clue to what Jenna wanted to tell her all along.

Review:

I gave this book 3 stars. I thought it was just ok. I felt like Amelia wasn’t allowing people the right to grief like herself. She was a little selfish in my thoughts. I am glad that she had a place to go to to help her and she figured out a way to help her through her grief.

She is able to go to a small town and meet her favorite author of a series books that seems to help her. This author also has some issues he is dealing with. They meet up and and start getting along. Things happen and they are both able to deal with their problems.

I am not trying to under play grief because it is real and can be hard to deal with. I just felt that Amelia wouldn’t allow other people to help her and get her the true help she needed.

🐋 I haven’t read a YA book in a while and this book has been on my NetGalley TBR for way too long. I wish I would have read it sooner!

🐋 You know from the synopsis that Amelia loses her best friend Jenna in a car accident. Understandably that loss impacts Amelia greatly and her grief is so raw and authentic that I felt like I was experiencing it with her.

🐋 Amelia has an amazing arc in this story and it was a joy to read. She transforms herself, expands her world, and opens herself up to new experiences. She discovers herself as an individual and learns to appreciate her singular value, rather than just view herself as “Jenna’s friend”. This is a perfect example of a bildungsroman (coming of age) novel.

🐋 I really loved when Amelia meets N.E. Endsley (the author of her favorite book) in Michigan. Endsley has issues of his own to deal with! I would love to gush here about what happens, but you have to read it. I will simply say it was poignant, funny, sad, heartwarming, and satisfying all at once.

🐋 All of the characters in this book are important to the story and well-characterized. Even the dog!

🐋 This is a fantastic and innocent love story with just the right amount of profundity to make it read very honest and real. I definitely recommend it, and particularly if you enjoy YA.

Thank you to @netgalley, @stmartinspress, and the author for the eARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is well written and the characters are described well. I really enjoyed this book. Amelia and Jenna's characters were great friends. It features bookworms and book festivals. I highly highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. This book is in stores for $18.99 (USD). I can't wait to read more books by this author in the near future.

A heartbreaking, heartwarming, and generally emotional read all the way through! Sad, sweet, and vividly written, I truly enjoyed this novel.

A few of the scenes dealing with mental illness could have been handled a little better, and that was where I decided to take a star off of my rating. But overall, I loved the creativity in this romance and coming-of-age story, and I especially recommend it for a younger YA audience.

A tender YA novel that examines love and grief with a steady pace and engaging prose throughout. Highly recommend.

3.75 🌟

When I first requested this book, I did it because it reminded me a bit of I'll Give You The Sun and I wasn't mistaken. While Amelia Unabridged cannot rival with IGYTS, it was a lovely read all the same.
I really enjoyed the plot and the whole premise. I will admit I was a little bit hesitant to pick this up (hence, the delay in reading it), because many times books with famous main characters, whether completely fictional or the fictionalised version of someone real, tend to be unbelievable and too dramatic. Fortunately, this wasn't the case. The writer felt pretty real, and if I were to go to a bookshop and find his books there, I wouldn't be surprised. I really liked him and Amelia both, and even the secondary characters were pretty well developed for a debut. I will be definitely try more books by this author, even if I am not sure her 2022 release is for me. We shall see.
Anyways, I found the plot entertaining, the themes heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time, the characters lovable and the style was perfect for this story and had some great lines, which I underlined on my Kindle. The only thing I felt was not necessary, was the love story. I would have preferred to see a special friendship rather than a love story, but I am not too mad about it.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loved IGYTS, but be aware there are some trigger warnings such as death of a loved one, panic attacks, grief, car accidents and more. Be sure to check them out before picking up this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC digital copy. I have not been compensated for my opinion and this is an honest review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish reading this ARC digital copy before needing to switch to other books that were being archived. The book remains on my Goodreads "want to read" list, and I will update my review to reflect an updated opinion when I finish it at a later date..

* Thank you to Wednesday book for the advanced copy for my honest review*

Wow, what a magical heartfelt book this was. I went into it blindly and came out feeling different towards the way I look at life.

Amelia’s home life isn’t normal. Her father leaves and in turn her mother becomes a zombie. To escape she runs and hides in books. On the day he leaves, she meets Jenna, a girl more beautiful and popular than her. Jenna invites Amelia into her life and they become the best of friends, like sisters. Jenna’s family even treats her as their own; inviting her on trips and paying for luxury meals. The girls decide to take a trip to a book event to meet and author they instantly bonded over, but sadly the author declines the event and afterwards tragedy happens. A book is sent to Amelia a couple weeks after and she takes a journey to find the magic again and to find a purpose for what’s happened. Along the way she meets people who change her life and make her realize that it isn’t always as mapped out as other make it for you. That you have the will to make yourself something in this world.

I didn’t think I’d love this book like I did. Like I said I didn’t set out knowing what to make of it or the impact it would have, but I love this book! The characters and the emotions that came with Amelia were exactly what I needed. Amelia is this not so perfect bookworm, who’s had to read to escape pain but then finds herself in people. She doesn’t want to disappoint, but she also needs to learn that not all things in life can be controlled and she just follow along, but that she needs to find herself for herself. That tragedies don’t make the world stop, if anything they make you want to keep on living. I also loved the complexity of Nolan and the things he’s been through that made the world more scary for him until Amelia makes him see there’s nothing to be afraid of.

This book is perfect for a bookworm or someone who’s gone through grief, to see it in a different light!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the creative plot, the character development and the relationship dynamics. Great read!

I was honestly surprised by how much I liked this. I think my enjoyment can largely be attributed to the absolutely magical bookstore that most of this story takes place in (seriously, can I go??), but I loved the rest of the book a lot too.

I wasn't really sure what I was getting into when I started this book, but this book was so much more than I could have ever expected. It's a tale laden with grief and heartbreak, but also deals with so much more than that. Amelia is stuck on a path in life she's not sure if she wants, but it's the path she created together with her best friend, who has just died tragically. This story explores Amelia's grief, her final moments of anger with her best friend, and the immense guilt she feels at not wanting the future they were planning to share together anymore. This guilt is what the book explores the most, as another character is introduced that struggles with this same mixture of guilt and grief.

My favorite part of this book had to be the lyrical writing, especially when describing the bookstore and some of Amelia's dreams/imagined scenes. Often, when books move too close to magical realism, or involve a lot of daydreaming on the part of the MC, I usually get put off if it doesn't well. It can easily feel cringy or too out-there. This book didn't have that issue at all, largely thanks to the gorgeous writing and descriptions that accompanied it, and I found myself enjoying the shared daydreams between the two main characters a lot instead. I also liked how the writing was able to carry the heavy aspects and discussions of this book, conveying the deep and tough emotions of the moment without feeling too dreary or hopeless.

Overall, I ended up really enjoying this, and will definitely be trying other books by this author!

This started off slow but after a bit it picks up pace and then not much goes on but a girl trying to figure her life out an a writer trying to face his problems. With that said I did enjoy most of the book it light hearted and what i need after a month of horror.

Amelia Unabridged is a book that takes you on an emotional roller coaster. It is beautifully written. You can feel the sadness, anger, and love from the characters through the writing. You can see the transformation that comes from grieving loss yet learning to love.

There are a few fantasy or magical elements to this story that caught me off guard at first. For being such a realistic book, this part didn’t seem to fit. As you get further into the book, these fantasy moments become poetic and blend right into the realism.

I am amazed by this debut novel. So well done.

5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Amelia Unabridged tore at my heartstrings. I loved the book and the narrator was an excellent choice as well.

Schumacher managed to make me cry, laugh, and just FEEL!

I will recommend this book to everyone who wants the emotional connection that Ashley gave me to a set of characters that I just wasn't expecting.

TW: death, grief

I was expecting a story about grief and loss. And yes, this novel does have that. Initially, I felt very emotionally invested in this story, and in Amelia’s struggle to cope with her grief. But after a few chapters, the story suddenly shifts and becomes a romance. This bothered me because it made it seem like the cure for grief and depression is romance – which is not true. Not only was that a problematic message for me, but I also didn’t like the romance in the story. It was very much insta-love and it felt so rushed that I couldn’t believe in it. So whilst this novel does have its poignant moments, its romance arc ruined the execution for me.

"There's nothing in the world a good book can't cure." A true gem of a book that exceeded my expectations.

Amelia Unabridged was such a lovely experience. That’s not to say that it was a fun read - it was heart-wrenching, to say the least, but so good. It was written really wonderfully, but made me sadder than I’d typically like to be. And it dives into that sadness pretty straight off the rip.

But I really enjoyed that the book is really a commentary on the things and people we lose, and those we gain in return. How we’ve got to find ways to get through the pain, and there are others who can help us through it, people we’d never expect.

The book itself if quite poetic, and the fact that this is a debut novel is mindboggling because it’s so beautiful.

The biggest thing for me was that while this book is more realistic contemporary fiction, there were times where the story would toe the line into magical realism, which got confusing for me sometimes. I couldn’t figure out if there was a magical element or if it was worlds within worlds. It was really all part of that larger poetic piece of the story, but it made for some confusion which led me to rereading certain sections and lines a few times.

Either way, it’s a beautifully written, wonderful story that will nest itself deep within your heartstrings. So if you’re ready for some big feels, this book is one for you.

I loved the concept and the book just read so quickly. Amelia struggles with knowing what to do and who she is, like many teens. She has faced major trauma and tries to work her way through it. This journey takes her places she never would have guessed and is a book lover's delight.

“It’s never too late to start a new chapter.”

I love books about books and Ashley Schumacher did not disappoint in this heartbreaking debut.

After Jenna’s unexpected death, best friend Amelia is left alone to deal with her grief. When an unmarked package arrives the only explanation is that it is from Jenna. Desperate for answers, Amelia travels to a charming bookstore in Michigan. This is where she meets the moody Nolan Endsley. Despite their initial issues, the pair soon form a strong bond based on loss and grief and must help one another learn to embrace life and move forward from one's grief.

In this heartbreaking coming of age debut, Ashley Schumacher displays a beautifully fresh writing style. The world building is magical and poetic, and it is hard not to imagine the world coming alive before your eyes. Amelia Unabridged displays heartwarming messages of love and loss and will leave you wanting more. Overall I am rating this adorable book 3.5 stars and would highly recommend it to someone looking for a book that will bring tears to their eyes while also putting a smile on their face.

I received a complementary copy of this book courtesy of St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the digital ARC of this book.

I am kicking myself for waiting so long to read Amelia Unabridged. However, once I started reading it, I couldn't stop and fell absolutely in love with this magical book.

If you are looking for a special, unexpected love story that centers around friendship, grief, and a beloved magical book series then you'll definitely want to pick this one up. Bonus is that parts of it take place in the cutest small town book store. I loved it so much and did not want it to end. I'm hoping we will get more of Amelia and Nolan in the future!