I’ve been reading Maureen Johnson’s blog for a while, and finally got around to picking up one of her books. I will admit right now that the reason I picked this book up out of all the others is that I listened to her podcast, and she mentioned that The Divine Comedy’s Charmed Life is one of the songs that best sums up the book… and well, I enjoy The Divine Comedy quite a bit, so that was a large selling feature for me.

Months after Ginny’s aunt died, Ginny’s aunt sends her a letter that leads to a journey across Europe. She has 13 letters (after the first one) that guide her first to England, then Scotland, eventually to Greece, and then back to England. In each place, she has a task that she must complete before she can read the next letter and move on to the next place. At first, it seems like there’s some deeper meaning to all of these places and tasks, but as time goes on, Ginny starts to wonder whether there actually is a reason behind everything she’s doing or not.

At each place she stops, she ends up meeting some of the most interesting people. While I was rather impartial to the main character, Ginny, I found everyone that she meets in her journey around Europe to be so vibrant. They had some sort of little story to them that left you wanting more… sadly, for the most part, the secondary characters showed up once and then never again. These characters definitely made the book that much more enjoyable.

Overall, this was a cute book, and I’ll keeping an eye out for the rest of her books.