⭐️⭐️⭐️
Iris’s first email details a go getter young person who wants nothing more than to get into her choice of college. Listing all of her extracurricular activities, desperation oozes off of anyone that age who needs to get out of their town with the help of an acceptance letter. What we find out immediately is that Iris is already dead and these emails are all that remains of her living life.
Cancer is not something Iris planned to have in her 30s. What she initially thought was many years she’s lived collapses to not having enough time to live. So, she tries to make the best of it by starting a death diary that connects with other users who have illnesses. They commiserate but overall it is a place to talk to people who understand and reach your own inner peace. After her death, all of her writings are sent to her former employer, Smith, to publish with of course the permission of her surviving sister.
Jade outright refuses assuming she knew Iris better and blames Smith for taking advantage of her sister. We get to see the other side of grief as Jade “hacks” into Iris’s email and realizes that Iris stopped taking chemo in her last year alive. A conspiracy forms that Iris was misinformed and chose marijuana over chemo because of incompetent doctors rather than maybe Iris just didn’t want to die in pain. This gives Jade a new cause to prove that Iris didn’t have to die if it was someone’s fault.
Both of the people in Iris’s life come together to remember her and learn about who she was to the other person. I would say that I found Jade’s arc more satisfying. It makes sense that she’s stuck in denial for the majority of the story. It’s hard to lose anyone. It takes reexamining her own life and career to see her sister as her own person with her own thoughts and not so nice opinions about the ways Jade has hurt her as well. Their traumatic childhood taking care of each other because of absent parents and a controlling mother. Breaking out of the idea that everything is always fine will require the level of introspection Iris took during the last months of her life recalling memories and reconciling with the actions she took.
If I had to say, the story felt lackluster with the romance between Jade and Smith. It seemed forced as if this is the logical conclusion heteronormative writing. There was hardly any chemistry especially if this was supposed to be a hate to love trope. Instead Jade was constantly aggressive, hostile, and rude to a person who was also grieving and also trying to help. Smith is not exactly the best character too as he steals money and emotionally manipulates his friend. I can’t begin to tell you how unlikable I found them. The time jump also did not help me to connect to Jade and Smith as what happens occur off screen (as most of the action since this book is written through found material) but you get the point. I would say it’s a decent read with just enough lightheartedness but really I wish there was more Iris in a book about her.