8/12/13

Book Review: Dear Adam - Ava Zavora

Title:  Dear Adam
AuthorAva Zavora
Genre: Adult Fiction, Romance
Publication Date:  September 16, 2013

Synopsis (From Goodreads:)  You’re the more real to me than any man I’ve ever known …

To book blogger Eden, Adam is the embodiment of every literary fantasy she’s ever had. Intelligent, wickedly funny, sexy, and attentive – he and his fascinating life seem right out of a novel. Their whirlwind relationship is so intense and all consuming that soon she can’t imagine being with anyone else.

But there’s one little thing that’s keeping Adam and Eden from their happily ever after.

They’ve never met. She doesn’t even know what he looks like.

Despite how hard she’s fallen for him and how he makes her feel, Eden’s doubts begin to threaten their passionate love affair. Why is he so mysterious? Why does he seem reluctant to meet her? What is Adam hiding?

Afraid that she’s being made a fool of, Eden is forced to choose between her heart and her head. Is Adam too good to be true, as her common sense is telling her, or is the truth more startling than fiction?


My Review:  I love a book that will engage you and wrap you in, as oppose to feeling like someone is telling a story. One thing I know for sure, Ava Zavora knows how to write a story that will keep you captive until the very end.  She is also a master of writing stories of romance and love without graphic or over the top scenes. 
 
Dear Adam makes you a fly on the (virtual) wall of a budding relationship that starts out on Twitter, and quickly moves through email, messenger, and even Skype.  You learn about Adam and Eden and their lives through these communications, both are very well rounded characters that easily become real people.  Even with Adam's private nature, you can relate to him and his emotions, as well as Eden's. There are a few short interludes where you might get Eden’s thoughts, or a little on the side dialogue with her friends or family, but I’d say 90% of this book is cut down to the choppiness of an email or messenger conversation.  To me this would seem like a very difficult challenge to have taken on, because while interaction between characters is what makes or breaks a book in my opinion, emotions and reactions from the same characters are also quite important - and this could be a difficult undertaking with this scenario.  While the emotions are definitely present within Dear Adam, sometimes it’s more than a few words typed out to create a sentence, and sometimes the emotions are written “between the lines” of the messages that Adam and Eden are communicating with one another, so you have to look for it.  Establishing this online relationship and making it real was something Ava Zavora accomplished quite well.  I was hard pressed to put down the book once I started it, because finding out what witty remark Eden may come up with, or how bold and forward Adam might be in his next email was too intoxicating.  I could just imagine both characters sitting around the house just waiting on the “bing” of a new email or messenger, and the smiles on their faces as they read the other’s reaction or react themselves to the latest communication.
 
There were times when I felt a little left out of the other aspects of Eden’s (since this really is her story) life.  I wanted more information about how her son was reacting to her strange fascination to a man she’d never actually met, and I wanted to know more about what was happening at work or with her friends.  Things like that.  I did kind of miss the filler that is present in normal books at times, however in the end you truly don’t feel like much was missing from the book.