Keep Me Posted by Lisa Beazley
Read: February 11 – 19, 2016
Format: ARC Print Books (Goodreads Win
My Book Rating:  3.5 Stars
Genre: Women’s Fiction / Chic-Lit

I received an ARC of this book from Goodreads First to Win. This in no way affects my review or feelings toward the book.

Keep Me Posted is a book that’s hard for me to review. I don’t really read Women’s Fiction, so I’m really not the target audience. I’ll get to more on why it’s hard for me to review in a bit.

The basic premise is two sisters, Cassie in NYC and Sid in Singapore, who decide to start writing each other letters and mailing them to one another, in order to reconnect the old fashion way. All is good and well, until the letters become public on the Internet and the sisters become pseudo-celebrities on the Net.

So, as I said before, this is a hard one for me to review. I don’t read Women’s Fiction, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. I will start by saying that I loved the letters. I honestly didn’t know if I would, but I really enjoyed reading the letters each sister wrote to the other. The story is told from Cassie’s POV, but even reading Sid’s letters, I felt like I knew her. I think that’s not always easy to do, so well done Ms. Beazley!

On the other hand, I didn’t really like Cassie. She’s the protagonist of our story, but she was very hard for me to like. Which is kind of funny, because I see a lot of myself in her as well. Cassie is in her mid-30’s, married to a wonderful man, and in the last year or so she’s given up her career in order to stay home and raise her twin boys. She pokes fun at crunchy mommy bloggers (I only know these terms because I myself had my last baby 4 years ago and was immersed in much the same world as Cassie.) I laughed and agreed with a lot of what she had to say about those kinds of parents. I shared a lot of the same habits and feelings as her (she’s a social media addict, as am I. She has an incredibly well-liked big sister and has always been in her shadow, as do I. She constantly questions whether she should have even had kids and feels like an utter failure, to which I think all moms can relate!)

However, I hard a hard time connecting with her because of how she’d throw around money like it was going out of style, and this is probably my own hang up from not being in the same income bracket as this character. $3,900 on a new summer wardrobe — which, I get how it is after having a baby and having no clothes that fit — but that seems excessive to me. Or a spur of the moment trip to Singapore to see her sister, there’s a few thousand more. But what kills me is when her husband makes a comment to the extent of, “I guess we’re eating rice and noodles for a while,” and then she throws around more money! Again, I’m in a different income bracket as this character, and I have a hard time relating to someone who doesn’t seem to understand the value of a dollar, but other readers may not take issue with that at all.

The first half of the book felt like a lot of filler to me as well. Some parts were funny, but there were a lot of tangents that didn’t move the plot forward, info dumping at times. When I reached the end, I think a lot of it could have been left out. Maybe this is how Chic Lit is, I don’t know, like I said, I don’t usually read it.

Chapter fifteen though? That’s when things got real. Cassie discovers that the blog where she’d backed up all of the letters between her sister and herself, has suddenly gone live. She was sure she set the privacy settings to PRIVATE, and yet, there’s her blog, out for the world to see… gone viral. Now she has to deal with the aftermath, all of her and her sisters private thoughts out in the world. Confessions about her in-laws, her husband, and her friends. She has to tell her sister what happened, and her husband, and she confessed to some terrible things in those letters that her husband can’t just brush aside. I really felt for her there and in the end I was rooting for her.

I think my favorite character of the whole book, however, was Uncle Sal, Cassie’s husbands uncle. Cassie and her sister-in-law are convinced he’s in the mafia, and he’s just a delight to read.

Ultimately, I think my biggest hang up with this book was that it often wasn’t told in chronological order, the tangents I mentioned before. That and Cassie’s throwing around money like it’s going out of style. But, the ending was beautiful and full of heart, which ultimately saved me from regretting having read this book.

Would I recommend Keep Me Posted? Yes. But not to everyone. Those who like Women’s Fiction and more literary works might enjoy this, or even those with young children who can commiserate with Cassie and her feelings. Those who stick mostly with genre-based fiction probably wouldn’t enjoy this as much.

NOTE: After writing this review and sitting on it for a while, it occured to me what I think my problem with this book was. It read more like a memoir instead of fiction.