Dear Eliza
Andrea J. Stein
Flashpoint Books (2024)
ISBN: 978-1959411703
Reviewed by Stephanie Elizabeth Long for Reader Views (09/2024)
Can one letter change everything? Eliza is about to find out.
Ten years after her mother’s death, twenty-six-year-old Eliza has compartmentalized her grief. She has a cozy apartment in New York, a promising career at a non-profit, and a casual, purely physical relationship with a handsome man without strings attached.
When her father unexpectedly dies, she is blindsided, even more so when her Aunt Claude arrives at Shiva with an envelope addressed to Eliza—a letter from Eliza’s mother. The letter, in which Eliza’s mother reveals a shocking secret about her family, shakes the young woman to her core. Eliza suddenly questions everything about her life. To make matters worse, when she reveals the letter’s contents to her brother, he is angry and distant, causing palpable friction between the siblings. Then, her frigid stepmother wants to cut Eliza out of the will!
Eliza is grappling with mixed emotions—shock, rage, and despair. Despite her need to seek closure, she knows there is no going back once she starts digging. Overwhelmed about where to begin, her brother’s best friend, Josh (on whom Eliza harbored a childhood crush), offers to help. Between her family life unraveling, mounting work pressures, and trying to decode the mixed signals she’s getting from Josh, Eliza wonders how she will make it through.
“Dear Eliza” by Andrea J. Stein is an emotionally charged novel about grief, family, and finding your roots. Some families love one another unconditionally, and others keep secrets—the kind that upend your life. Set in bustling New York, the story follows Eliza as she navigates the loss of her father while digesting the secret unearthed. Her grief becomes complicated after the proverbial bomb has been dropped, and Eliza is left scrambling, trying to salvage the jigsaw puzzle that is her life.
Many of us can relate to some sort of startling revelation (maybe not to this extreme) that alters the trajectory of our lives. It changes how we see things—our past and current relationships. Dealing with her father’s death and uncovering new, life-altering information forced Eliza to see her late mother in a different light. For so long, she had placed her mother on a pedestal, but learning the truth meant Eliza’s acceptance that her mother wasn’t immune to making mistakes, nor was her father entirely at fault for their shaky relationship. Stein has done an excellent job of showing readers that things aren’t always what they seem, and sometimes secrets, painful as they might be, have a way of putting things in perspective.
Andrea J. Stein excels at tugging on readers’ heartstrings. There was no shortage of emotional scenes in “Dear Eliza.” While the poignant plot often had me swallowing the lump in my throat, Eliza’s journey had many uplifting moments, like heart-fluttering romance, root-worthy confrontations, and an array of quirky characters. What initially began as an impossibly painful situation evolved into something beautiful and validating. This book will appeal to readers drawn to books about resilience and self-discovery.