Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay is a novel about Samantha Moore who has been in the foster system on and off since she was a little girl. She was placed with her mother who somehow passed a program to get her back but then was found on the streets after her father traded her to pay off a debt to the group of men he owed money. After graduation she is offered an opportunity by Father John from the Home and a Mr. Knightley. She is given the chance to go to graduate school and all she has to do in return is write regular honest letters to Mr. Knightley about her progress and her life. Mr. Knightley is the only person who she feels comfortable enough to be honest with except of course Father John who know some of her history through her case records. To say that Samantha has had a rough life is an understatement. Her father tried to strangle her in front of a mirror so that she had to watch. Her mother was a drug addict who only cared about herself and her drugs and maybe Sam’s dad. Now Mr. Knightley was offering her one last chance but she had to go to school in journalism and she loved fiction. Sam lived in the fictional world of Dickens and all the old classics. Her speech was peppered with quotes from all those books. Could Sam live an honest truthful life and trust those around her into her dark secrets?
I liked this book but you can’t judge the book by its cover. I didn’t like the way it ended though I could see it coming. It made me cry so often just seeing how the foster system works against the children it is supposed to help. If this is the first book that Ms. Reay has written I look forward to reading more of her works.
This book was provided by Booksneeze for this review.
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