Putting my final review here as a comment bc I'm noticing some people didn't see I added it to the main post..

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I’ve finished book three. Sorry for the little delay had two other books I had to read for work in between Part 2 and 3.

I have to say that this thing was a long slog part Book Three, Part 5 was a nice pay-off. Charlie was the first character I genuinely cared about, which I think made the difference. And there’s something about Charles regret and need for redemption that resonated more than the challenges facing the earlier Davids and Charleses.

That said the letter writing conceit was rather thin. Many letters didn’t sound like letters at all and they repeated things we already knew happened from the Charlie chapters. It read a bit like by book 3 the editors deferred to their newly famous author.

I also was interested that this was written during the pandemic. On the one hand, an impressive turnaround! On the other, what did it have to say about the pandemic? It seems like it was a protest against some of the more draconian limits imposed by the state - which I concur with - but didn’t really offer solutions. The alternate path, presented as “New Britain” is mysterious and the different choices they made left unclear.

Would love to hear what other folks thought. Thanks for taking this diversion with me.

Tim