From You To Me by K.A. Holt

From Goodreads,

"Amelia Peabody lives in a small town where nothing changes. And that's just fine by her. After losing her big sister, Clara, a few years ago, Amelia can't handle any more change. But when she starts eighth grade, she accidentally receives a letter that Clara had written to herself. In it, there's a list of things she'd wanted to do before the end of middle school and never finished, like get on the softball team and throw an awesome birthday party on the lake.
Amelia wonders if it's a sign from Clara. Maybe if she completed the list, her heart would stop hurting so much, and she could go back to being her old self. But as she makes her way through, Amelia finds that there's no going back, only forward. And she realizes she'll have to put her own spin on Clara's list to grow and change in the ways she needs to.
K. A. Holt's beautiful new novel is about grieving and growing up, and the ripples loss creates for a girl, a family, and a community."

Goodreads - From You To Me

I have a bucket list.  A series of things that I want to accomplish before I kick the bucket.  When I was scrolling through Scholastic I read the summary for this book and it just screamed bucket list.  I knew I had to purchase this book because it was the type of book that I live for.  Sure enough, I was not disappointed by this book about a girl receiving a letter.

This book follows Amelia who is going into the eighth grade.  She has been grieving for three years over the death of her sister.  She finds that each day is difficult and driving past the lake makes the pain almost unbearable.  On the first day of eighth grade she is supposed to get the letter that she wrote to herself.  Only the letter she gets isn't hers.  It's her sisters letter.  Amelia reads the letter and immediately feels connected to her sister.  Her sister wrote a list of things that she wanted to accomplish.  Amelia takes it upon herself to complete her sister's list and to hopefully find peace with her sister's death.

Favorite quote from From You To Me, 

"Does it help if I tell you everyone is sad in their own way, and you are definitely not invisible?"

This book was absolutely amazing.  When I started this I really thought that the entire focus of this book was that Amelia was going to run around with her best friend completing everything on her sister's list.  This wasn't the focus, and I'm secretly glad it wasn't.  While the letter and completing the list was an important piece of this book, I ultimately felt like the focus was on Amelia finding happiness.  So many people get caught up in situations in life and they lose sight of their own happiness.  They don't take the time to stop and think about why they are doing something or if it going to bring them any happiness.  Why keep doing something if it isn't going to make you happy?  Why stay at a job if you go to work dreading it?  I think that we as a society aren't happy with life anymore.  I also think that we all feel like everyone else around us is happy.  We all think that our friends and coworkers have a better and happier life than we do, but in all honesty everyone is struggling with something.  Some people bottle it up and keep their problems to themselves, while others need to talk about and flaunt their problems.  Everyone is different, but ultimately everyone is unhappy in their own personal ways.  I'm glad that Amelia worked on completing the list.  She ultimately started it for her sister, but I think that over time she worked on the list for herself.  She worked on it to help find some happiness and closure to her sister's death, and that is exactly what she got.

There wasn't a single thing that I didn't enjoy about this book.  It was perfect in all the ways a book should be.  I give this book 5 stars and recommend this to young adults.  This book has a lot of good messages and I think everyone could take something away from it.