Because You'll Never Meet Me

By: Leah Thomas

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Eric Michael Summerer

Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship that becomes a lifeline during dark times - until Moritz reveals that he holds the key to their shared, sinister past and has been keeping it from Ollie all along.

©2015 Leah Thomas (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Morris Award Finalist, 2016

Really enjoyed this book!

I actually don't know how this one came into my Audible library. Maybe Audible recommended it to me or my son purchased it for a class. I don't remember how I got it but I loved it! Such a well-written book and very interesting. It couldn't stop listening to it. I just wish the next book was recorded also.

I recommend reading

Mesmerising book, it really gets you thinking about how fortunate you are, how much you take for granted, it opens your eyes to the world outside, it captures everything, from giving great life lessons to great fiction and enjoyable stories

Amazing!

I absolutely loved it, it was heart warming. The characters took my breathe away and the story was out standing.

Phenomenal book

This is my second time listening to this audiobook. I'm not usually one for audiobooks, but this one is special as the characters in the book are portrayed reading their letters aloud! The voice acting is great and does a good job differentiating between characters dialogue. 100% worth a read/listen, and I recommend checking out the sequel at your local library!

Perfect book for the audiobook medium

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas is a young adult contemporary novel and tells of the pen friendship between two isolated young men, Moritz from Germany and Ollie who lives in the US. Each of the two young men has a physical ailment which limits their interaction with mainstream society. These same limitations – for Ollie an severe reaction to electricity and for Moritz a heart defect requiring an electronic pacemaker – precludes their ever meeting face to face. Their friendship develops through the letters they write to each other. The novel is written in the style of letters exchanged between the two.

I loved this book, which I listened to in audiobook format.

What I liked

The characters. I adored both Ollie and Moritz and was emotionally invested in their journeys. I was really rooting for them both. Their two differing points of view are beautifully brought out through the letters they write to each other. Each has a unique writing style which gave a wonderful insight into their characters. It is a mark of how invested I was in the two that when Moritz finally comes back into contact after an absence of several letters, I had a big smile on my face.

The friendship. The relationship between the two is wonderfully developed, starting from an initial slow building of trust to the deep bond they share. It’s clear that both of them are stronger people in the end for the friendship, which encourages them to push beyond their comfort zones.

The audio narration. Because You’ll Never Meet Me is a perfect book for the audio format given that it is written in letter format. You are hearing the characters’ words directly. There were two narrators, one for Moritz (with a gorgeous, slight German accent) and one for Ollie. Both narrators were brilliantly able to reflect their characters’ personal growth through their performances.

What I didn’t like

In all honesty, there was very little I didn’t like about Because You’ll Never Meet Me. At one point I did have concerns that Thomas was going to go for the real cliché in the connection between the boys, but she avoided that.

I gave Because You’ll Never Meet Me a well deserved four and a half stars out of five.