13 Little Blue Envelopes (13 Little Blue Envelopes, #1)

by Maureen Johnson

[Stephanie]

13 Little Blue Envelopes follows Ginny as she goes on this crazy journey throughout Europe. All alone. With only 13 envelopes as a guide. These envelopes were written by her crazy aunt who whisked away to Europe without telling anyone, and now she's making it up to Ginny by having her come to Europe herself. The problem is is that Ginny's aunt has been dead.

First of all, I must say that if I wasn't following Johnson on Twitter, I probably wouldn't have given much thought to her books. But 13 Little Blue Envelopes premise really intrigued me, so I went ahead and gave it a go. So this is my first novel by Maureen Johnson.

I've never read a book narrated like this. You weren't necessarily in the mind of the character. It was third person, and the person telling the story just... told the story. You never get a glimpse inside the main character's, Ginny, head. It seemed to be a person watching Ginny go through this experience and describing everything she encounters.

There was a lot, and I mean a LOT of description to the point that you would feel like you were sitting with Ginny. I thought Johnson actually went to all of these destinations and could describe them a least enough for the book. But I was surprised to find out that she hadn't been to some of the places Ginny ends up at. But of course, with the internet I'm sure I could look places up and describe them somewhat decently.

I enjoyed the story. It was... interesting. Though I didn't believe Ginny could fly to London with only 1000 dollars to pay for her flight. When I looked up plane tickets it was well over $1000, but then again, that was from St. Louis and not New York, so who knows. The story was pretty sad. Ginny was alone most of the time and she was slowly realizing and accepting the death of her aunt.

Ginny does manage to find a love interest, or I guess you could call him that. I personally felt like they weren't very good for each other, but he was always there for her in the end. I think the story would have been better if it was told in first person, or maybe even third person, as long as we could get inside Ginny's head to know what she was feeling during certain events.