My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry

My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry By Fredrik Blackman

• Fiction
• © 2015
• 372 pages
• Includes reader club questions at the end (Would be a great selection for a book club.)
• Personal rating 3.5/5

This is the second book from the author who wrote A Man Called Ove and Blackman doesn’t disappoint here either!  I absolutely love his writing style and really hope that he continues to produce such wonderful fiction!

Basically the book is about the relationship that a 7-year-old (almost 8) little girl named Elsa, has with her crazy Grandmother that everyone refers to as “Granny”.  They share a very special bond and even have their own special world called “The Land of All Most Awake” with its own secret language and everything.  This is where Elsa and Granny go when things in life just don’t seem fair.

Elsa is an extremely intelligent and perceptive little girl, which makes her “different” among her peers and we all know how mean kids can be when you are “different”.  But her Granny always reminds her (in her own crazy way) to embrace who she is and to always stay unique!  Throughout the book Elsa is faced with some pretty grown up scenarios but she gets through them all with a little help from the charters in the Land of All Most Awake.

The more you read about the characters, the more you will discover about the people who Elsa shares her life with.   When I very first starting reading the book I had a hard time keeping everything straight in Granny’s and Elsa’s secret world.  The stories that Granny would tell her reminded me of something from the Never-ending Story and sometimes it was hard to remember who everyone was.  As I kept reading, somethings stuck and made sense and somethings didn’t.  I would urge any other reader that may face these same struggles to keep reading because it will all start to make sense in the end.  And when it does, you will realize what a wonderful Grandmother Elsa actually has and how many people she has touched throughout her life.

The only reason this book did not get a 4/5 is because it was hard for me to follow at times. I’m sure there are other readers out there that will have no problems at all with it and if that is you, then it defiantly deserves that extra half point!  Blackman has one more book published called:  “Britt-Marie Was Here“.  Britt-Marie was a character in “My Grandmother asked….” and I am assuming this book will be a spin-off about her life.  I am defiantly looking forward to reading it as well!