Dearest Josephine

By: Caroline George

Narrated by: Nathalie Pownall

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

Love arrives at the most unexpected time....

The year 1821: Elias Roch has ghastly luck with women. He met Josephine De Clare once and penned dozens of letters hoping to find her again.

The year 2021: Josie De Clare has questionable taste in boyfriends. The last one nearly ruined her friendship with her best friend.

Now, in the wake of her father's death, Josie finds Elias' letters. Suddenly she's falling in love with a guy who lived 200 years ago. And star-crossed doesn't even begin to cover it.... 

“Dearest Josephine is the type of story that becomes your own. The characters’ heartaches worked their way into my own chest until I hurt with them, hoped with them, and dared to dream with them. This book is teeming with swoon-worthy prose, adorable humor, and an expert delivery of ‘Will they end up together?’ I guarantee you’ll be burning the midnight candle to a stub to get answers. Step aside Pride and Prejudice, there’s a new romance on the English moors.” (Nadine Brandes, author of Romanov)

“Caroline George infuses an epistolary love story with a romance and charm that crosses centuries. Touching and inventive, it bursts with wit, warmth, and a blending of classic and contemporary that goes together like scones and clotted cream. Dearest Josephine is a delight.” (Emily Bain Murphy, author of The Disappearances) 

“Dearest Josephine is more than an immersive read. It is a book lover’s dream experience. Josie’s residence in a gothic English manor and her deeply romantic connection to Elias, who lived years in the past, is as chillingly atmospheric as Rochester calling across the moors. This story is George’s treatise on the power of books and character to creep across centuries, to pull us close and invite us to live in a fantasy where we find love - literally - in the kinship of ink and binding. But it also acknowledges the dangers of letting ourselves fall too deeply when sometimes an equally powerful connection is waiting next door. This love letter to books, and the readers who exist in and for them, is a wondrously singular escape.” (Rachel McMillan, author of The London Restoration and The Mozart Code) 

Romantic and evocative listen in both contemporary and historical time periods

Stand-alone novel

Book length: 86,000 words

©2021 Caroline George (P)2021 Thomas Nelson

Couldn’t get past a few chapters

I don’t like reading books that are just a grouping of letters and texts as a general rule, but listening is way worse. It does not lend itself to audiobook format, especially having to listed to the email to and from, re, .com…. Etc. The little sound clip every time a text is sent was soooo annoying.

Also, the narrator isn’t skilled enough for this. Everyone sounds the same except for the American character is slightly different because the accent sounds like a very strange blurring of British, Australian and Boston.

I had to stop less than an hour in.

A Masterpiece

I completely admit that this was an impulse buy. I'd seen it around Instagram, but it was a cross between contemporary and historical told using text messages, emails, letters, and even excerpts from one character's novel. I've never read anything quite like that, so I was super unsure if it would be my thing. But one person's post intrigued me when they mentioned how there's a slightly mysterious element since the main character discovers two-hundred-year-old love letters to a young woman eerily similar to her. Oh, and she has the same name, too.

So, I decided to try something outside my comfort zone and pre-ordered the audio. Honestly? I was impressed. It did take me a few chapters to get used to the flow of the alternating texts, letters, and novel chapters, but once I did it was easy to follow and interesting. I stayed intrigued throughout, wondering how all these things tied together. Was the Josephine in the letters and novel really the same as Josie, the modern girl? Would she somehow, miraculously, be united with Elias from two hundred years ago? I was truly curious to learn what would happen while also being touched by the deep thoughts on grief and love (romantic and non-romantic) that the author wove throughout.

I've heard in passing that there may be varying opinions on the ending. Some readers may have been unhappy while some liked it. I'm in the latter camp. I liked it. In fact, I got a little misty-eyed, and the more I think about it, the more I like it and really appreciate what the author did with it because it wasn't JUST about giving her characters a happy ending. It was about how sometimes a happy ending may look different from what we first thought we wanted, but different can still be good. It was about letting go of the past so we don't miss out on the future, but also acknowledging and appreciated the gifts the past gave us and the way it and the people we knew shaped us. This is the point where I can't talk more without SPOILERS, so if you'd rather not know how things work out, now is the time to stop reading. I'm serious, I'll start spoiling things in the next paragraph.
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Still here? Okay, don't say I didn't warn you.

This book is NOT a fantasy or time travel story, so it HAD to end with reality. That meant that no, Elias and Josie didn't and couldn't end up together, separated by time as they were. In fact, it turned out that "true love conquers all, including time" wasn't the point the author was trying to make. See, "true love" is a nice concept, and some people do fall in love quickly, stay in love, get married, and make choices that help them keep that marriage healthy and long lasting, all without ever having needed to pursue/date more than that one person. It's a beautiful thing when that happens, BUT many people fall in love with someone only to end up, for one reason or another, not staying with that person permanently, and the reason may not be something within their control.

This is what "Dearest Josephine" addresses. It also addresses non-romantic love, because we can very much love someone like a friend or family member and then they end up leaving our lives, maybe because of a big move, or your lives going different directions, or, in the case of Josie's father, death. We then find ourselves at a point of needing to choose whether to cling to what we had in the past and try to bring it back, or move on.

For much of this story we watch Elias trying to pursue Josephine (the one from two hundred years ago) via writing her letters. What he felt and what she taught him while they were together was life changing for him and the reader is able to see that it was indeed something special and sweet. After she left, he sent the letters to where he thought she was, trying to communicate his love for her. And you WANT him to find her. You WANT them to end up together. Modern day Josie does too, not the least because Josephine is just like her. They have the same name, the same favorite colors, the same life experiences, tastes, habits, etc, etc. You, Josie, and even her friends become convinced something strange is going on.

Meanwhile, despite being caught up in this mystery, Josie still has to live life in the modern world, which means figuring out what to do with the old English estate her dad left her in his will, dealing with her grief, and becoming a part of a new community. I thought the author did an amazing job balancing Josie's real life stuff with the mystery, showing how Josie at first is using the mystery and her supposed love for Elias to hide from reality, but then learning to use exactly those things to help her connect to real people and FACE her reality. As I said before, Elias and Josie don't end up together. In fact, it turns out that Elias and the Josephine of two hundred years ago didn't end up together either. He never found her. And because he never found her, he ended up meeting another young lady who was different than Josephine but still beautiful, kind, and someone who loved him and whom he could love. It takes him letting go of Josephine to see this, but ultimately he is able to do so, and also acknowledge that having Josephine in his life, even temporarily, helped make him a better person. Instead of being bitter that things didn't work out the way he wanted, he was able to say thank you to her and then move on with peace in his heart.

Similarly, in investigating Elias's letters, the estate her father left her, and her new town, Josie, like Elias, learns things and meets people that change her. She thinks she's falling in love with Elias, but comes to realize that this, among other things she's done in recent years, has been a way for her to hide from the grief she feels over her father's passing. It is by learning what really happened to Elias that she is 1) able to connect with an old friend as well as make new ones, and 2) finally realize that while it can be painful, it's okay to "close the book." It's okay to let go. Because it is only when we close the old book that we are able to pick up a new one. To look to the future and write what happens next in our own life stories. Doing so doesn't mean that we have to forget what happened. It means that we acknowledge the ways the stories and people who were temporarily in our lives changed us and helped us become the people we're meant to be.

And just as Elias was able to write one last letter to Josephine to thank her for being in his life even as he was now ready to let her go, so the book ends with Josie writing a letter to Elias to thank him as she lets him go to take hold of her own future. It was... *sniffles* It was really touching to me.

To end this review, I will share some lines from the song "For Good" from the Broadway play "Wicked" as I think they capture the heart of this story perfectly:

"It well may be/ That we will never meet again/ In this lifetime/ So, let me say before we part/ So much of me/ Is made of what I learned from you/ You'll be with me/ Like a handprint on my heart/ And now whatever way our stories end/ I know you have rewritten mine/ By being my friend./ Like a comet pulled from orbit/ As it passes the sun/ Like a stream that meets a boulder/ Halfway through the wood/ Who can say if I've been changed for the better?/ I do believe I have been changed for the better/ And because I knew you/ I have been changed for good."

Ok story, terrible format

This is a totally ok story. Unfortunately, the format makes it almost impossible to follow in audio book format. The story is told mainly through texts, emails, letters, and the reading of a novel which becomes incredibly difficult to follow. I have an hour and a half left to the book and, quite honestly, I'm not sure if I can stand listening to "To: Faith Moretti, kardashian-underscore-for-life-at-mailbox-dot-com" enough to finish the story.

I'd say this is a lighthearted story that watchers of Bridgerton would enjoy, but the format makes it one that should be read hard copy instead of listened to.

Did not finish

Save your time & money. Annoying main characters + mediocre writing = why waste my time. I’m annoyed I wasted a credit on this one.

Wow

my job is to pack orders, and I stumbled across this one during work. I decided to give the audio book a go. I loved it. The ending was honestly the biggest tear jerker.

Delightful read!!!

What a delightful story this was! And the narrator was brilliant! I highly recommend it!