Inside little blue envelope 1 are $1,000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket.
In envelope 2 are directions to a specific London flat.
The note in envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist.
Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/ bloke–about–town called Keith go to Scotland together, with somewhat disastrous–though utterly romantic–results. But will she ever see him again?
Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it's all because of the 13 little blue envelopes.
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Teenager Ginny is super close to her Aunt Peg (her mom... meh, not so much, it seems). Aunt Peg is a fun -- but maybe a little flighty -- bohemian spirit who desperately wants Ginny to break out of her shell and learn to really live life a bit. Aunt Peg gets news from her doctor that she's terminally ill. It's not until after Peg's passing that Ginny is given a packet from Peg, a packet which includes one special envelope informing Ginny that there are 12 more just like it set up around the world for Ginny to find. She's only allowed to open the next envelope when she's completed the task from the previous one. Ginny's envelopes take her on a whirlwind international adventure through various places such as England, France, Italy, Greece, Scotland and the Netherlands.
This story was a decent fluff piece but it didn't live up to the excitement I had when I first heard about it. Ginny herself was not an especially funny or admirably strong character, more like a doormat really... just going along with whatever people tell her to do. She gets this once in a lifetime kind of opportunity to see all these places around the world and her reactions are so indifferent! Oh ho hum ancient Roman temples that have existed for thousands of years, Rembrandt's house.. whatevs. I get that that was part of the point, Peg trying to shake Ginny out of that and see how much beauty there was in the world.. but I think part of the problem for me was Johnson's writing itself. She writes little to no actual culture into any of the places Ginny is seeing, there's no real flavor to any of it. Also, these "adventures" Peg has Ginny go on felt very random and goose-chasey. I would've liked to have seen more of a connection between all the tasks, leading up to some big impactful AHA moment, instead of this (what felt like) "hey, go visit all my old friends for me" run around. There is something revealed to Ginny through one of the letters, but really that could have been addressed with a direct trip to the person without all the other here and there and everywheres. Especially with the backtracking back through Scandinavia to head back towards Italy & Greece where she started out earlier -- what was the point of having her go in a loop if you weren't going to give her a life changing experience along the way?!
Like I said, fair mindless fluff here but UGH this had potential to be SO much better. This mostly just struck me as a YA version of Cecelia Ahern's PS. I Love You (but with a family angle instead of a romance). There is a sequel to this book -- a whole other novel written just around that last envelope but I was so meh about this book by the end, I'm in no major rush to grab it. Maybe if I see it around when I'm thrifting one day, I might check it out out of sheer mild curiosity.
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