Dispatches from Parts Unknown

Julie is just surviving life. And it seems to help that her late dad's favorite wrestler is commentating along through what's happening in her life. As she goes through along what life has to offer, she may just understand why a wrestler is in her head. This book was beautful and more! I cannot explain thoroughly how this book was so gentle and kind to someone who's grieving. I liked how it was taken lightly that I feel there were not a lot of triggering things in the book. The book was funny, and kind. It navigated feelings in a way that it was open to interpretation. It does help that there was a glossary of wrestling entertainment terms in the beginning of the book. Given, I did watch World Wrestling Entertainment when I was still a kid, but all the terms just went over my head. And I truly loved the parallels of the fakeness of wrestling and the realness of life in this book. And the fact that the author shared his interest with a mix of dread on how readers will take it is somethwing so genius. It gives readers who are interested in it that they are seen, and there are readers that have no interest in it, that they might see wrestling entertainment in a different light. Anyway, the characters are so lovely too. Julie is our main character, but you have to love the other characters because you get to see the subtle changes in Julie because of them. And the lovely thing about this is that, it's not only Julie that you see grow but the other characters are growing too. I swear, I cannot help but to see how lovely they are but not in a way that it was too overly sweet. As much as wrestling is an in-your-face type of entertainment, this book has been so subtle, and honestly, so healing for me too. I mean, the cover is even so subtle too! So yeah, maybe you can say that I'm bias, but this is the first time I read anything from this author, but truly I just liked it so much. Also, this book made me look at Top Gun in a different light too. If anything, there are times that confusion do set in because of the wrestling terms and the world of wrestling. But they do fall into place as the book settles in. As mentioned, this book is amazing for me. I feel like this is one of those books that will not be forgettable because of the uniqueness of it. I also learned that this author has been around and this book made me interested in reading other books of his. *I received an eARC of this book