Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    When You Read This: A Novel
    When You Read This: A Novel
    When You Read This: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    When You Read This: A Novel

    Written by Mary Adkins

    Narrated by Sarah Naughton

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    For fans of Maria Semple and Rainbow Rowell, a comedy-drama for the digital age: an epistolary debut novel about the ties that bind and break our hearts.

    Iris Massey is gone.
    But she’s left something behind.

    For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

    Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

    Told in a series of e-mails, blog posts, online therapy submissions, text messages, legal correspondence, home-rental bookings, and other snippets of our virtual lives, When You Read This is a deft, captivating romantic comedy—funny, tragic, surprising, and bittersweet—that candidly reveals how we find new beginnings after loss.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 5, 2019
    ISBN9780062890771
    Author

    Mary Adkins

    Mary Adkins is the author of When You Read This, Privilege, and Palm Beach. A native of the American South and a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School, her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Atlantic. She also teaches storytelling for The Moth. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

    More audiobooks from Mary Adkins

    Related to When You Read This

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Romantic Entanglements Bring Humor And Heartache To Small Town

      Jun 21, 2021

      Katherine Heiny’s novel transplants readers to Boyne City, Michigan, through the keen eyes of the town’s new schoolteacher.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      Under The Whispering Door

      Nov 3, 2021

      ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 376 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author TJ Klune ▶ Publisher Tor An uneven yet goodhearted hybrid of Dead Like Me and The Good Place, Under The Whispering Door ponders what happens when you don’t start actually living your l

      1 min read

    • Article

      Cameron Esposito Was Supposed To Be Book Touring. Her Partner Got Coronavirus. More Change And Challenge.

      Apr 22, 2020

      CHICAGO - Comedian Cameron Esposito had planned to be on book tour during April for her new memoir, "Save Yourself." But instead, she spent the month caring for her partner, who was diagnosed with COVID-19. It's been a strange month, she said - and a

      5 min read

    • Article

      Sam Delaney Is At Home

      Feb 6, 2023

      In 2018 I had a complete nightmare, losing my radio show and TV show within a couple of months of each other. Shortly afterwards, my production company descended into a state of financial pandemonium and all sorts of professional and deeply personal

      3 min read

    • Article

      Love And Other (chemo) Drugs

      Apr 14, 2019

      Love And Other (chemo) Drugs
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Right Message

      Jul 9, 2020

      The Right Message
      4 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Nov 18, 2022

      The sweet, loyal lady who’s worked for our family for many years is a longtime resident of the Masiphumelele informal settlement near Cape Town. She’s lost her shack to fire eight times. She’s woken up regularly in the middle of the night with shouts

      5 min read

    • Article

      Not All Superheroes Wear Capes

      Jul 20, 2022

      Not All Superheroes Wear Capes
      7 min read

    • Article

      Family Values

      May 20, 2020

      Family Values
      8 min read

    • Article

      Reflections

      Feb 1, 2019

      Do you know what’s worse than a hypochondriac? A vindicated hypochondriac. You know it’s going to be bad when your GP gets choked up. No one likes telling a mother she’s got cancer. Doctor Tearful needn’t have worried. I’d been working towards this m

      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Dec 15, 2023

      Write to flmag@fairlady.com – and remember to put the word ‘letters’ in the subject line. I did not want to relate quite as much as I did to most of the articles in FAIRLADY HOT! but there I was. I found exactly what I was looking for, as I needed mo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why We Lie

      Jun 9, 2021

      Why We Lie
      5 min read

    • Article

      Adam Kay

      Dec 4, 2023

      Adam Kay
      5 min read

    • Article

      Virginia Ironside

      Jun 30, 2021

      Q Having spent a year wearing soft shoes, I was due to lunch at my club recently, which meant putting on proper lace-ups. It was a lovely day, so I walkedfrom Sloane Square to St James’s Street. Fine. But when I left, I found that both heels were blo

      3 min read

    • Article

      SHOUT OUT To My EX

      Oct 2, 2019

      SHOUT OUT To My EX
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for When You Read This

    3.5/5

    55 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Strange format, but it gives a little of the thrill of reading someone else's emails. What it says about dying is sweet and sad and profound. I read it straight through.
    • 3/5
      Meh. This book is meant for twenty-somethings. I'm 40 years too old - and should have known better.The thing is that I can enjoy books meant for young adults but not when it's one that is so-not-subtle about hitting you over the head with a profound truth you've known for decades.
    • 5/5
      I had no expectations going into this book. I will say that if I had, my expectations would have been shattered. This book blow me away (in a good way). Instantly, I just fell in love with Iris, Simon, Carl, and Jade. Although, I will have to admit that my favorite was Iris. The way that Iris wrote her blog was real. She did not hold back anything. The graphics that accompanied her blog posts were awesome. So were the comments on her blog. The next shining star is Carl. She was naïve but with a hint of paprika. Finally, there was Simon and Jade. I loved that Simon would write to Iris even though she was gone. I felt like this book was more of a celebration of life and moving forward than about death and sorrow. With engaging characters and tons of laughter, I had an enjoyable time reading this book. Mary Adkins will have you laughing with joy as you read When You Read This! A five star recommended read.
    • 4/5
      This surprisingly uplifting novel is centered around a “d-log” [as in drawing blog] started by Iris Massey, 33, after she was diagnosed with oat cell lung cancer, a very aggressive and highly malignant form of lung cancer. When she was got her diagnosis, she was given six months at most to live. She started the d-log to help her figure out what her life meant. She wrote:“This whole time I thought my real life hadn’t started yet. Turns out that was my life. I have six months or so to make that okay, somehow.”Iris signed up with the graphic storytelling site “dyingtoblog.com" and began writing. Excerpts from Iris’s d-log are interspersed throughout the rest of the book, which consists of emails and text messages as well as blog posts.After Iris died, her boss (and also her good friend) at a brand management firm, Smith Simonyi, hires someone new as an assistant, a Stanford student named Carl Van Snyder Jr. When Carl was clearing out Iris’s desk, he found a printout of Iris’s blog titled “My Life’s First Draft: A Blog Turned into a Book by Iris Massey.” There was also a note asking Smith to get it published.Smith contacts Jade, Iris’s 37-year-old sister, to give her some of Iris’s things and to talk to her about publishing the d-log. Jade is opposed to it and disgusted by the idea, calling it “cancer porn.” She is dealing with issues of her own that make her less than congenial. (Some of the emails throughout the book from Jade are directed to the TherapistAwayNetwork, or TAN. The TAN site suggests a prompt, like “What Have You Lost?” and the client takes it from there.)Jade is also dealing with her grief over Iris, and in fact the author begins the book with a poem, putatively by Jade, that I thought was excellent:"Googling GriefBy Jade MasseyAll the poems about griefAre wrong.My grief is theOppositeOf a couplet.It is not pretty.It does not make roomFor rhymes.Here is my poemAbout grief:So this is pain.This is what it wasAll along."Simon too is processing grief and anger, not only about Iris but about the lives and fates of his parents.The question is, how will all of them work through this trying time? The interactions between Jade and Smith, affected by not only Iris’s blog but the humorous interjection of Carl into their lives, makes for a lovely ending, in spite of everything, and one which holds some surprises.Discussion: Iris’s blog is by turns funny, poignant, insightful, clever, and sad. One of the posts I liked best was one in which she lists some thoughts, like “Wearing red boots today,” “Overheard a toddler say ‘when I was a child’" and “My bagel’s warm cream cheese” and over the top of it she writes in large letters: "NONE OF IT MATTERS AND I NEVER WANT IT TO END.”Evaluation: This truly lovely story about making the best out of tragic situations is well worth reading.