I was really intrigued by this through part one. The format took a minute to get used to but I started enjoying how the story was told through emails, texts, and other correspondence. I enjoyed the investigation. Unfortunately, when part 2 rolled around and the investigation was “over,” I didn’t enjoy the story anymore. It started to feel too drawn out and I found that I didn’t really care. The character’s voices felt like they didn’t have enough distinction between them. I dnf’ed at 50%.

Thanks netgalley for this opportunity.

DNF at 40%.

I tried several times to read this book but I couldn't get myself to finish it. I think it was primarily the format that was not working well for me. Also, the protagonist kind of annoyed me that I just couldn't continue reading.

The premise of this ebook sounded really interesting, however it is written in a series of back and forth email communications. Telling the story this way did not work for me. I could not finish because for me I didn’t see myself reading 6hrs of people’s emails. I just couldn’t get past the format.

I was excited about the format of this book but overall it fell a bit flat for me. It was thought-provoking though. I would be interested in trying out whatever the author releases next!

2.5 stars, rounded up. I haven't read a book with an epistolary format before - told exclusively through the format of letters, emails, social media etc - and I think a big part of why I didn't vibe with this book is because I don't think that this format is for me. I felt separated from the characters and plot and it was a little more clunky feeling to me. The way that Seth communicated grated on me a bit, because he seemed incapable of code switching - surely he would be capable of making some of his emails sound more professional?? The tone of all the communications started to blend together a bit for me- I don't feel that the characters were fleshed out enough for me to get to know them well enough. There were some great themes explored (e.g., balancing creativity with societal expectations/pressures, the meaning of success, the experiences of being involved in the literary world), some humorous writing, and the premise of the book was unique and interesting, but it just fell a bit flat for me unfortunately. Thank you to Red Hen Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who was obsessed with the “ttyl” book series as a kid, I am always looking for epistolary novels that will take me back into the feeling of reading those books. (Also, do the “ttyl” books hold up? Has anyone revisited them?)

I think “Dear Edna” was so successful in creating this feeling in a really thought-provoking and existential dread-filled way. I will definitely be thinking about this book in the days to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hen Press for the ARC!

The entire book is written in email, letter, and text correspondence along with other written content throughout the years. Though I enjoyed this book, the beginning had a slow start due to the business casual writing style Seth had to employ while trying to find information about Edna Sloane. At first his sense of humor came off as fake at the beginning, but as he builds relationships, his writing style relaxes a bit and the humor is more "real." These aspects made it difficult for me to get into at first.

Though very different, the novel has a similar concept to the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo due to the nature of Seth trying to get an interview with Edna, who is very closed off and private. However, what really sets this book apart is Shearn's excellent writing. The voice of each character comes through with each correspondence. As a reader you are able to grasp Edna's quick wit and reflective nature as well as Seth's insecurities and admiration.

In addition, I really appreciated how the excerpts from Edna's books were extremely well written to the point they actually come off as a modern classic. Oftentimes authors will write excerpts from their characters' books, and they just aren't that good, almost as if the author is battling their voice and skill vs the character's.

I will close with a quote near the end of the book that resonated with me:

"And yet when I can trick myself into believing, for a moment, that a God might have created us, it seems very dear to me that this God would want us to create."

Thank you NetGalley & Red Hen Press for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

If you've ever wished 84 Charing Cross Road and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler could go on a long, meandering walk through the boroughs of New York at dusk and share their secrets — or maybe you're a normal book lover who doesn't imagine books on really good dates but just needs to break a reading slump — you'll inhale Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn. You might even enjoy all the musing on writing as vocation as well as book publishing realities (and more) in one sitting, as I did. The book is epistolatory and follows a pre-pandemic millennial publishing peon as he searches for an author who made a debut splash back when publishing was more three-martini-lunches than it's present day make-your-own-press-tour. Divided into the two parts, I say to go into the story knowing as little as you can so you can enjoy the journey (if not the main narrator at all times; I scoffed at him a couple of times in the beginning, but perfect narrators are boring, and this one didn't fail to make the interesting choice throughout the book, so.).

Dear Edna Sloane pulled off the feat of being not just a book about books but a novel about books that didn't go for any of the easy endings I feared it might while reading it. Did I fist pump when an influence I suspected showed up in text? Reader, I did, and bet you will, too, for we are both of us broken in the same way if you've read this far.

For readers who have read Shearn's earlier work, A Mermaid in Brooklyn, there's a small treat for you as well on page 1. I've yet to read Mermaid as this was my first Shearn, but I was delighted by the find while checking out the author's other work. Personally, my next Shearn will, I hope, be Unseen City, which I missed when it was published in the beginning of the pandemic. Dear Edna Sloane will engage and hang around the brains of anyone who's ever been drawn to a vocation (writing, parenthood, a life well-lived) in a culture that sometimes seems cluttered in clickbait. A thoughtful and fun read!


Thank you Red Hen Press for providing this e-book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hen Press for allowing me to read an ARC of Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn, in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to love this, I did. It wasn't the format, as I typically love reading epistolary novels. This just seemed to go on and on, and on and on for me, with no real substance.

This is a very engaging epistolary novel...it's fun to read emails and articles and old letters, after all, and the book juggles a few mysteries all the way through. In addition, this is a very ambitious book. I understand if some readers felt like something was missing, but I think that's part of the point...there is something missing. The letters directly discuss what is missing from real life.
We get glimpses of three generations and three different kinds of pain and emptiness...the unthinkable trauma of a Holocaust survivor, his daughter who is too sensitive and too feisty for ordinary or literary society, and a guy in his 20s who is dealing with his own generation's catastrophes. Our catastrophes. The book also explores how to make art and how to live the good life regardless...how that might mean growing a beautiful garden for one person, and being alone to write stories for another. How to keep going. How to make it all mean something. Of course, there are no clear answers...we haven't collectively solved these problems! They remain mysteries. But there is much here that's thought-provoking. I know I'll be thinking about these characters and their problems for a long time.
I'd like to say more about my fascination with history repeating itself throughout this story, but I don't want to give anything away.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC

I’m giving this book five stars because I feel that the point of art is to incite an emotional reaction of some kind. However, this book brought out a very visceral reaction out of me, and made me so mad at some points.

From the beginning, I hated Seth and everything about him, and at first I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to or not. But as I got to know Edna, I realized what his purpose was as a character a bit more. I flew through this book, partially because of the format and also because I genuinely needed to know where this story was going. It engaged me throughly.

I’m all about “unlikeable” women in literature, and I adored what this book was saying about that. The juxtaposition of Edna’s rage towards her editor for wanting to punish her character’s sexuality and the men in her life in general with Seth’s reducing of the women in his life to what he can get from them is extremely well written and rage inducing. It was a very good commentary on how women are treated in their creative endeavors, and the obliviousness of men in the same industry to those struggles. I just wanted to protect Edna and her choice to stay out of the spotlight.

I also wrote in my notes that the book made me crave matzoh ball soup. I come from a long line of New York Jews, and I really enjoyed that infusion of culture within the narrative as well.

Overall, a really powerful story with engaging characters, good and bad. I devoured the book in just a few hours.

I read Amy Shearn’s Dear Edna Sloane in one sitting.

I laughed out loud as I read Seth’s earnest, but misguided emails, texts, posts, and letters as he searches for Edna Sloane, the reclusive author of the 1980s literary sensation An Infinity of Traces who disappeared at the height of her book’s success. Seth, a disillusioned editorial assistant at a digital publication company, becomes convinced that the only way to save his stalled career is to rediscover the forgotten Edna Sloane.

Dear Edna Sloane is told through a series of letters, emails, text messages, and even the occasional Reddit post. Beneath its humor is an emotional core. I saw myself in protagonists Seth and Edna. Like Seth, I remember being a wide-eyed recent English Literature graduate, filled with ideals and ambition, and how quickly the world grinds them down. I also recognized Edna's struggle as a mother and an older woman. As both myself, I've noticed the ways I start to become invisible to the world.

Shearn's portrait of Edna, a fierce and vulnerable woman, feels achingly real. The men in her life—her ex-husband, her editor, her son, and even Seth—demand her energy and validation. They try to diminish Edna's desires and her hard-won sense of self, but she refuses to let them.

As Seth and Edna’s friendship deepens, so does Shearn's meditation on what it is to live a creative life in a world driven by clicks and an obsession with the next big thing.

I loved this book immensely. It's clever, current, and a reminder that sometimes a good belly laugh is just as meaningful as a great epiphany.

This is a SHARE.

Dear Edna Sloane, from Red Hen Press, will be released in April 2024.

The book was a promising read. It has a good premise and an interesting format. Unfortunately, it was one of those books that did not meet my expectations. It needs a bit more oomph like some more interesting plot points and some more excitement from the characters. It would be nice to see it get to some interesting tidbits at a quicker pace. The book might be better enjoyed by someone else especially those who enjoy reading through texts, emails, messages, and letters. A great promising book that was just not for me.

I loved the idea of this book. At first the tension was building as we wait to see if he ever makes contact with Edna Sloane. Once that aspect is resolved both letters sounded like they were written by the same person. Some parts were interesting to learn about Edna but after a while I found myself bored. For someone off the grid she sure had a lot to say. The letters have a rambling style about the most mundane aspects of life. Overall, the story started interesting and kind of loses its way.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

I did not care for this one; probably a mistake on my part when reading the description. I didn't mind the epistolary style, it was the subject matter that didn't grab me. I will go with three stars because this was my problem, not something with the story or writing.

Plot summary: Edna Sloane was a literary IT girl of the 80s. Her first book was a huge hit and she was a star of the literary scene. Then, on the day she was due to meet her editor to discuss her second book, she vanished, never to be seen again. Now, decades later, a rumour has emerged that Edna has been seen in in NYC. A young journalist, Seth, who works for one of those literary websites that pays extra for clicks, becomes obsessed with finding Edna. Can he track down this reclusive author, or is the story of what happened to her more sinister than it first sounds?

Thoughts: This book receives both four stars and two stars from me. It's an epistolary novel, which is a format I really enjoy. I also really enjoyed Part I, which details Seth's investigation. He is a really charming character and I enjoyed hanging out with him. However, for me the book gets a bit lost in Part II, which includes more voices than just Seth's. It felt me me like this section suffered from the epistolary format - it just got a bit long winded. And, no spoilers, but there was one voice in particular that I just didn't buy.

So, even though this did fully hit the mark for me, I liked it enough to definitely look up more books from this author.

Seth Edwards, an aspiring writer and editor, becomes obsessed with uncovering the story of Edna Sloane, a once-celebrated author who vanished from the public eye. This obsession leads him on a path filled with unexpected discoveries about Sloane, the literary world, and himself.

It’s a thoughtful and nuanced look at literary ambition, the search for creative authenticity, and the rediscovery of a forgotten literary star. I love an epistolary novel, and choosing modern epistolary formats (email, text, social media posts and comments) was clever. The way in which Seth’s voice changes depending on the forum and the audience is incredibly true to life. He might not even be aware of it, but Edna, that brilliant observer of humanity, points out:

“For your generation I imagine it is fragmented even further – who are you, Seth Edwards? The Facefriend profile? The ImmediaPix feed? Right? Or am I off-base. Robin says I overestimate the fragmentation of the modern self. Maybe I do, maybe ‘twas ever thus, it occurs to me, as I remember my mother’s voice changing whether she was on the phone with customer service, the secretary at the synagogue, my father, with her sister in Texas, her other sister in Tel Aviv – how I judged her for shifting so slitheringly between all these selves – no one is a harsher critic than a daughter.”

Other things I loved: Edna is a great and subtle feminist. Her experiences as a woman in the world of publishing, and delicate rendering of the conflict between mother/wife and artist were so well done. Additionally, a book about a book (pr any great work of art) makes me desperately wish I could experience that work of art myself (think: The Goldfinch, The Fault In Our Stars). That's just a wonderful added piece of texture.

The novel's strength lies in its ability to explore profound themes such as the meaning of success, the pressures of creative life, and the impact of our cultural obsession with 'the next big thing' on literature and creativity. 'Dear Edna Sloane' is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the world of literature, the creative process, and the timeless quest for meaning in art. It's a love letter to literature and a reminder of the power of stories to connect us to what truly matters."

It's a book about why books matter:

"Fiction makes the unsorted mass of life feel meaningful, as if there were some organizing principle to our days."

This book was over-the-top funny, first of all, and so creative. Anyone especially who has ever been involved in literary culture, as a student, in publishing, in teaching, or just an avid reader (especially one who has gone to a lot of author readings) will find something bone-chillingly familiar in the slapstick. The bird tracks were a little distracting but I imagine that they'll be lightened in print and ebook. It does really fun things with time and time stamps, as well as media: we get newspaper articles, emails, text messages, Facebook messages all of which really capture the super recent past as well as the 80s. Reminds me of Where'd Ya Go Bernadette (and some Nicholson Baker I read in college haha). Thank you Red Hen Press and NetGalley for this awesome ARC!

In Amy Shearn's captivating novel, "Dear Edna Sloane," readers are immersed in a spellbinding tale that spans decades, weaving together the stories of two writers connected by a shared passion for literature. Edna Sloane, once a shining star in the 1980s New York City literary scene, vanished into obscurity after her debut novel achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of Seth Edwards, an aspiring writer and editor, whose relentless quest to rediscover Edna Sloane becomes the catalyst for a poignant exploration of creativity, fame, and the relentless pursuit of artistic dreams.

The novel unfolds as an epistolary exchange between Seth and the elusive Edna Sloane, providing a unique and intimate lens through which readers witness the complexities of the creative process. Amy Shearn skillfully navigates the cultural landscape of 1980s literary New York, offering a rich backdrop that highlights the heady echelons that propelled Edna to stardom. Simultaneously, the narrative explores Seth's contemporary struggles, offering a reflection on the challenges faced by aspiring writers striving to break through in a world fixated on the "next big thing."

Shearn's characters are masterfully crafted, each embodying the novel's broader themes of artistic ambition, the impact of societal expectations, and the enduring nature of creative pursuits. The letters exchanged between Seth and Edna are filled with profound insights and meditations, guiding readers through a thought-provoking journey that transcends the boundaries of time.

"Dear Edna Sloane" invites readers to contemplate the consequences of our cultural obsession with literary success, prompting reflection on the sacrifices inherent in the pursuit of artistic brilliance. Amy Shearn's novel is not merely a mystery; it is a profound exploration of the human condition and the intricate relationship between creativity and societal expectations.

In conclusion, "Dear Edna Sloane" stands as a testament to Amy Shearn's storytelling prowess, offering readers a poignant and thought-provoking narrative that seamlessly blends mystery, nostalgia, and philosophical musings. This novel is a must-read for those seeking a rich and immersive literary experience that transcends time and explores the timeless quest for artistic excellence.

I didn't know what to expect going into this book, but I was invested right away and loved the format of correspondence.

Even though it was told through different kinds of correspondence I felt like we really got a sense of who Seth was in the way he interacted and corresponded.

I was invested all the way through in his quest to find Edna Sloane.

A delightful book and a love letter to literature, reading and finding out what really matters to you.