Dear Taylor (Letters to War, #1) By Eija Jimenez

Beautiful story about a Latina teacher and a black soldier who start a friendship that becomes a real love story. I really enjoyed this book and I couldn't put down. The story between Daniela and Taylor is built at a slow pace, so you can see how their relationship is changing and the feelings become stronger. I started reading the sequel and I hope that it will be the same or maybe better! English This book throws me all over the place! Amazing. Bonus points for so many Characters of Color. Can't wait for the sequel. Read in a day. Make me cry my life.

http://kambookreview.over-blog.com/de... 302 4.5 Stars rounded up to 5 Stars

I really enjoyed this book. It is the story of Taylor Phillips, a soldier in Afghanistan with whom High School teacher, Daniella Melo begins a friendship via letters. Daniella gives an assignment to her students to become pen pals with soldiers. There is a name leftover so she decides to write to Pvt. Phillips. And so begins a close friendship between the two women and Daniella's young daughter, Jackie who is 9 mo. old at the start. They exchange letters for the 2 years that Taylor is deployed. When Taylor returns to the states and has a 4 week leave she takes a chance to visit the Melos in Rhode Island.

This is a sloooow burn romance. Two years of writing to each other and they finally meet. Neither even knowing what the other looked like because of fuzzy photographs they exchanged. It such a contrast with the audiobook I'm reading concurrently. There the couple declare their undying love after only a week. Oh, and this takes place during DADT.

There is a good cast of characters, Taylor's former Sargent, Rick and by coincidence is her foster brother; Christian, her army buddy/partner and Tasha, Daniella's BFF.

Daniella is Latina and Taylor is black. Here is a quibble I have that prevents me from giving it a full 5 star rating. It suffers from a fanfic pet peeve of mine. I discovered midway through that this stated out as a fanfic. It was an ah ha moment. It is identifying the other person by their hair or eye color or in this case skin color. I discovered later that it started out as fanfic. It became annoying i.e. her dark hand reached over or the black woman... Never is Daniella identified by her skin color or even her ethnicity. I didn't want you to be bugged about it if you never noticed before o I put it under spoiler tags.

The ending is a slight cliffhanger but luckily the sequel, Sincerely, Daniella is available now. I hate to wait between books in a series! 302 4 stars. That cliffhanger was rude! This was such a good read. A wonderful cast of characters and a slow burn romance that’s still budding and getting started. I’m a sucker for pen pal romances and the first beginning portion of this is told in letters between Danielle and Taylor while Taylor is deployed. They write to each for two or three years and develop a really strong friendship before they ever meet each other in person. All of that worked for me. They are both such strong characters and are genuinely good people. The chemistry between them was sizzling and I know that book two is where their romance is really going to kick off and I’m excited. Also, Danielle’s daughter, Jackie is the cutest kid. I adored her and I loved her and Taylor’s bond.

I think my one and only issue is that this is very obviously a book that was originally a fanfiction. Meaning that the writing does that thing of describing the characters by a certain trait all the time. Taylor is Black and she’s constantly referred to by her skin color i.e ‘the dark woman’ and other variations. No. Just, no. It’s very amateurish and I really didn’t like it. Other than that this was a really good read and I’m excited to read book two. This is the first book that I’ve read by this author. I do not specifically recall what road I went down to see it the first time, but something about it made me want to read it immediately upon first viewing. Not sure how long ago that was. For reasons I don’t recall I couldn’t immediately read it right then and there.

And the reasons, vague though they were (and are still somewhat), that lead me to believe that I would enjoy this book turned out to be true. This is a great book all the way around, and I kept having to wipe at my eyes while reading.

The story is told through two point of views â€" and from their point of views and from their letters. Daniella Melo is a teacher at a school in Rhode Island. At the start of a semester, Daniella hands out information about soldiers fighting overseas. She has an assignment for her huge class of 120 students â€" write to them. That specific part isn’t as important, since it rarely came up again (the students writing part), but it’s important because someone dropped her class that morning (one of the reasons I’m confused as to which level Daniella teaches at, I thought it was a high school, but the mention of people jumping around, joining and dropping classes to find their best ‘fit’ sounds more like the beginning of a college semester) and Daniella has one extra information sheet left over. Either one soldier isn’t going to get anyone to write to them, or Daniella will take on the task. Before she can think about it, another woman appears and squealing is heard (I’m not actually sure if squealing actually occurs, I forget now, it just seemed fitting). That’d be Tasha (friend who is originally from Britain â€" ‘the Brit’ is used a lot) and Jackie (Daniella’s adopted daughter).

Eventually, though, Daniella takes on the task of writing a letter and sends it off. Whereupon the story shifts and now we, the reader, are with Taylor, the black woman (yes, that is one of the odd slightly off putting aspects of the story, the author felt the need to constantly say things like that â€" ‘the black woman glanced over . . . . the black woman stretched . . .’). Taylor’s bouncing around driving a military vehicle and doing stuff. Delivering stuff. Dodging bullets. Eventually she gets back to base and while standing near her bunk, her sergeant pops up and thrusts an envelope at her. She’s confused as no one ever writes her (the only one who might is the one who gave her the letter, Rick, a foster brother â€" hmm, I was going to get to that but â€" Taylor was ‘in the system’ and then aged out, she was put into the system at a young age). She somewhat fears the letter but eventually opens it up. And finds a short message from Daniella. And, when she turns the letter over, also a drawing from a 2 year old girl â€" Jackie. Taylor is quite touched by this, unexpectedly to her, and quickly jots off a reply and sends it off. I’d say ‘and then they communicated back and forth …’ but that didn’t happen. Both wanted that to happen but . . . well, let’s just say ‘complications occurred’, and once complications were overcome they did get to that ‘they sent off letters to each other . . . for about two years, before they meet for the first time in the flesh.’

And they do meet in the flesh. Taylor has a month leave and is staying with Rick in Boston (who is living there now because he’s now out of the military (I’m being vague as . . . how much should I say?)), but Rick knows about Taylor’s letter writing and basically kicks her out . . . gently, to go visit Daniella and Jackie in Rhode Island. Somewhat complicated, though, since this . . . crap, I really should have written this differently.

Meet Taylor â€" she’s 20 and has been in the military for a short while. When she was 18 she aged out of the foster system and moved to New York. She got a job at a coffee shop and was there when she watched the events unfold at the Twin Towers. She was just close enough to see it up close and personal, just far enough away to be out of the danger zone. She wanted to rush in and help, but only professionals were being allowed in. She continued serving coffee â€" to survivors, and then to rescue personal. Eventually she leaves and joins the army. Gets posted to Afghanistan. Whereupon, somewhat shortly after arrival, Taylor receives a letter from a woman from Rhode Island. Over time, roughly (maybe exactly) two years, Taylor works in Afghanistan and then in Iraq while receiving and sending letters to Daniella.

Since, and we are back to where I left off, since it’s the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, and since communication between civilians and military personal in a war zone is hard even now, and so . . gah, is this where I was leading up to? Mmphs. Right, so, because of all of that, Taylor doesn’t have any real method of contacting Daniella now that she’s in the USA. She doesn’t have a cell phone, and doesn’t have Daniella’s number even if she did have one. She does have an address but . . . she wants to warn Daniella before just dropping by. And that’s where Rick kicks her out of his place, telling her to just go there.

It was quite a touching scene when Taylor sat in Rick’s car in Daniella’s driveway. Nervous. Then walking up to the house. And having a somewhat messy (from cooking) looking woman answer her knock and wonder who she is â€" only to learn that it’s the woman she’d been writing letters with. And then Jackie and Taylor were introduced to each other â€" --..

As noted, it was a month leave that Taylor had. And after that month’s leave was up, Taylor returned to the war. And the letters continued. Both living their lives, now separately, though feeling a connection. Until they meet again, when Taylor received leave. And this continued throughout the rest of the book.

One of the points to stress is that both women learned about the other first through the written word before either meet. They developed a connection before, really, either even know what the other looked like. Though I’ve not actually said anything that isn’t in the book’s description.

Characters: Taylor Phillips, military woman, starts off at the age of 20 when the book opens. Her ‘battle buddy’ is a fella named ‘Christian’, and her foster brother, Rick, just so happened to be her sergeant â€" neither realizing this would occur when Taylor turned up in Afghanistan.

Daniella Melo â€" history teacher, mother of Jackie, hints to her age are given, but if it was outright stated I didn’t see it. Her friends include Tasha and . . . well, she’s friendly with co-workers at her school, but she’s closed herself off to a large extent after an event occurred when she was 18.

Setting: Taylor pops around, but is mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq when she’s ‘over there’, then I believe it’s Missouri she’s based at for a brief moment or 8; while Daniella sticks to a small town in Rhode Island.

Time: early to mid-first decade of the 21st century. As in, 2001 to . . . hmms, I don’t actually recall how far we got, but not past 2005 (if we even got up to 2005).

ETA: Oh right. There's something like a cliff-hanger ending (and based on other reviews I've now read, the ending here is different than the ending that was in the fanfiction version (see comment where I noted fanfiction stuff below)). I didn't 'care' because I read this after the second book had already been released. And I already had access to it. And stuff. So . . . yes, there's a cliff-hanger ending.

Rating: 5+

August 17 2017 English

This book completely took me by surprise. The first couple of pages had some typos, and I thought I wouldn't be able to continue with the book, as that kind of thing usually puts me off. However, the story completely drew me in, and I couldn't put the book down.

The relationship between Taylor and Dani is so beautifully explored - so gentle and thoughtful. I think Eija has got Taylor's voice spot-on, and I loved that we get to see both POVs through the letters.

The second part of the book explores what happens when Taylor and Dani finally meet face-to-face. I found the portrayal of their meeting very realistic - they exist in two different realities, and need time to understand and trust each other.

I though the end of the book dragged on a bit - we also lost the letter-format POVs. The last chapter was a bit..meh..too convenient. No HEA. There is a book 2, which continues the story.

For a first book, I think the author has done an amazing job. With a little bit of editorial spit and polish, the writing could be brilliant. I look forward to reading her future work - and I would recommend that you read this, even if you are not a fan of conventional romance. Dear Taylor (Letters to War, #1) I really enjoyed this book and I will say my correlation with liking it a lot was that it was free on kindleUnlimited (shameless plug but I swear I don't work for Amazon). Anyways, it's a cute story about a 20 something solider (Taylor) who was aged out of the system that wanted to do something more meaningful with her life, hence becoming a solider. She gets entered into a pen pal program by a friend and starts a meaningful friendship with a history teacher (Daniella) in Rhode Island. It's a really sweet story and though the story is told through the letters, a good portion of it is not. Keep in mind that this story takes place a few years after 9/11 and D.A.D.T was still enforced. If you've got the time and you're looking for something easy and sweet to read, then this is a good one. Lesbian Fiction, Lesbian Romance I enjoyed this book immensely. It's one of these (as I like to call them) military lesbian books and that's typically a big plus for me as it was in this case. It's also a sticky, sweet romance and I like that too. I will give one warning though; this story ends abruptly and leaves the reader hanging. Ok, ok, I'm hooked now. Hurry up and publish the next one! Dear Taylor (Letters to War, #1) As a Swen this made me so happy. An amazing story as we all knew it would be. Worth a sleepless night! Kindle Edition As a Swen, this book got me like 'woah'. I have to admit I never got a chance to read the whole fic, but this book was so good that now I no longer regret not reading the fic.
I have to point out that I was so happy to see some more POC! It was a bit different that way and although it was a bit hard to imagine those characters different, it gave the book a special something the original never had.
Thanks for that! Can't wait for the sequal! Eija Jimenez

Taylor Phillips was working as a barista in NYC the day the twin towers came crashing down. Seeing her city in shambles, coated in ash, and American lives lost, she enlisted to fight the War on Terror.

Daniella Melo, a Rhode Island American History teacher, challenges her class to write letters to soldiers fighting overseas. With one name left and a student short, Daniella takes it upon herself to write letters to Private Taylor Phillips stationed in Afghanistan.

Over the next two years, the women exchange letters, sharing stories of their daily lives: Daniella trailing after her rambunctious daughter, Jackie, and dealing with overeager seniors planning prom while Taylor trudges through sand and dirt, driving her humvee in cold deserts. Their friendship continues to grow until it becomes something so much more than either woman expect. Dear Taylor (Letters to War, #1)