Author: Ava 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.
