Review: More than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer

More than We Can Tell

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Pages: 304

Release date: 8^th March 2018

Genre: Young adult Contemporary
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Synopsis (Goodreads) *While this book exists in the same universe as Letters to the Lost, it is a standalone title.*

Rev Fletcher is battling the demons of his past. But with loving adoptive parents by his side, he’s managed to keep them at bay...until he gets a letter from his abusive father and the trauma of his childhood comes hurtling back.

Emma Blue spends her time perfecting the computer game she built from scratch, rather than facing her parents’ crumbling marriage. She can solve any problem with the right code, but when an online troll’s harassment escalates, she’s truly afraid.

When Rev and Emma meet, they both long to lift the burden of their secrets and bond instantly over their shared turmoil. But when their situations turn dangerous, their trust in each other will be tested in ways they never expected. This must-read story will once again have readers falling for Brigid Kemmerer’s emotional storytelling. 

Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars

More Than We Can Tell follows the story of Rev and Emma, We first met Rev in ‘Letters to the Lost’ but this can be read as a stand-alone.

Rev and Emma both have personal struggles; Rev is a foster child who was taken in and adopted by amazing parents and continue to help him to move forward after surviving an abusive childhood; when he is contacted by his birth father it triggers past feelings and hurt as well as confusion, his parents have also taken on a new foster child so there are a few changes in his life. On a night out he comes across Emma who is a game designer with a father who is quite absent and a mother who doesn’t understand her passion; they connected despite their differences.

Honestly, I was intrigued by both of these characters and their back stories but I didn’t find any chemistry between them and their dialogue felt stilted, I also felt they were quite reliant on one another despite barely knowing each other; they also spent a majority of the book apart so there wasn’t a lot of face to face interactions.

Brigid Kemmerer covered a lot of subjects in this book such as cyber bullying, physical, sexual and mental abuse, relationship breakdowns and friendship drama but I would have liked more of a resolution to these problems rather than a mention.

What I did enjoy was the mystery of Emma’s troll, I had an inkling of who it was from the onset and I was right! I was also quite intrigued about Matthew, the new foster child and my heart truly broke for him. I thought Rev’s foster parents were wonderful.

Overall, I didn’t love this book; it had its positives but for me there was more negatives and the biggest of all was the morose feel that it had. I couldn’t fault Brigid Kemmerer’s writing but I will have to pass on any more books in this series.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing via Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

About the author: BRIGID KEMMERER is author of LETTERS TO THE LOST (Bloomsbury; April 4, 2017), a dark, contemporary Young Adult romance; THICKER THAN WATER (Kensington, December 29, 2015), a New Adult paranormal mystery with elements of romance; and the YALSA-nominated Elemental series of five Young Adult novels and three e-novellas which Kirkus Reviews calls “refreshingly human paranormal romance” and School Library Journal describes as “a new take on the supernatural genre.” She lives in the Baltimore area with her husband and four sons.