The Last Little Blue Envelope

Title: The Last Little Blue Envelope
Author: Maureen Johnson
Read: February 20, 2014
Series: Little Blue Envelope #2

Summary: Ginny Blackstone thought that the biggest adventure of her life was behind her. She spent last summer traveling around Europe, following the tasks her aunt Peg laid out in a series of letters before she died. When someone stole Ginny's backpack—and the last little blue envelope inside—she resigned herself to never knowing how it was supposed to end.

Months later, a mysterious boy contacts Ginny from London, saying he's found her bag. Finally, Ginny can finish what she started. But instead of ending her journey, the last letter starts a new adventure—one filled with old friends, new loves, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Ginny finds she must hold on to her wits . . . and her heart. This time, there are no instructions. goodreads

Review: I read the first book in this series and remember being delightfully surprised at how much I liked it but I can't precisely remember why. I would definitely pick book one over this but I just had to know what happened to Ginny and the envelopes. It turns out, I'm not a very big fan of Ginny. I think she's kind of stupid, definitely naive, and very boring. It makes no sense why all of these super interesting people (Ellis, Keith, Aunt Peg, etc.) would be so drawn to her. She doesn't have much to offer for being the main character and that is a little disappointing.

Nonetheless, I followed Ginny on another journey. This one had a few returning characters as well as a couple more "main characters" which gave the story some more support. Ginny is lucky that all of these people and adventures just fall into place because she has no idea what she is doing. I feel like this is supposed to be a "coming of age" novel, similar to the first one, but it also seemed like Gin was very slow on the uptake which is frustrating at time.

There is a happy ending but it seemed like a lot of work for everything that seemed so obvious from the beginning. This book is very predictable and you will know what is going to happen but it's a nice little jaunt through Europe which took me back to some of my backpacking days (luckily I was smarter than Ginny and survived with all of my belongings) and probably the main reason I liked this book.