13 Little Blue Envelopes (Maureen Johnson, Blue Envelopes #1)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ginny hasn't seen her favourite Aung Peg in months when she suddenly receives a package in the mail from her containing thirteen little blue envelopes, $1000 and instructions to fly out to London. Once there, she can open the envelopes one at a time, following the instructions on each one before opening the next. Following the instructions, Ginny sets off, expecting the adventure of a lifetime. What she doesn't expect is exactly what is waiting for her on the other side of the Atlantic, nor who she will be when she flies back home.

I know this isn't a completely believable book (Maureen herself didn't even really intend for it to be). No mother would allow their seventeen-year-old daughter to go rampaging across Europe with $1000 and thirteen letters from her aunt, who no one has seen in quite some time. What was the likelihood of Ginny finding Keith? And how did Ginny actually manage to do all of those things the letters said?

But as I read further and further, I realised I didn't care. It's a well-written book. Ginny and Keith and Peg and Richard and Carrie and everyone else are all good characters. Not good as in perfect, each of them managed to tick me off at one time or another, but good as in real.

And besides. This wasn't a completely cliché book. And that means a lot to me, especially after spending a day reading and reviewing stories on FictionPress.

I think that the thing that truly made me appreciate and love this book, though, was that I want this adventure. I want to go places. See places. I want to have Ginny's adventure. I want to have my aunt go insane and leave me thirteen little blue envelopes that send me trekking across Europe. I want to see all of those places, to meet a starving artist in London and a creep in Rome and four friends in Copenhagen. I want to get busted making out with a great guy with an awesome British accent in a graveyard.

But I don't have a crazy aunt (my aunts are all perfectly sane), and I don't have enough money to trek across Europe alone. Nor do I have that much willpower. Or freedom. So instead, I settle with just simply reading the narrative or someone who did. Maureen Johnson is an undeniably a good storyteller, and she has an undeniably good story to tell in 13 Envelopes. So call it cliché and call me a hypocrite, but I loved every page of it.