Review: The #100 Love Notes Project: A Love Story by Hyong Yi

Title: The #100 Love Notes Project
Author: Hyong Yi
Format: Hardcover/ paperback
Publisher: Lorimer Publisher
Publish Date: January 28, 2017
Source: PR

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Flying socks, Spanish anchovies, origami butterflies, and tarot cards comprise just a small part of the collaborative efforts that produced 100 Love Notes, the book. Here, author Hyong Yi and the 17 artists he commissioned to illustrate his 100 three-line poems share some of the insights behind their work. Together, they have illuminated a story that captured the hearts of people around the world, giving it even greater meaning and purpose.

The initial version of Hyong Yi's 100 Love Notes was launched on the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina on November 21, 2015. To honor his wife, Catherine Zanga, on the one-year anniversary of her death from ovarian cancer, Hyong and his two young children gave strangers 100 handwritten love notes, notes that chronicled Hyong and Catherine's life together, from their first meeting, to dating, marriage, children, and her death, which came far too soon."

My Two Cents:

Just a few years ago, Hyong Yi decided to celebrate his wife, who was lost to cancer very quickly, by handing out 100 love notes to people on the streets of Charlotte, NC. It was his way of taking something difficult and sad and turning it in to something beautiful. This book is a collection of all of those notes. Yi commissioned many different artists to illustrate what was in the notes, turning this book into a beautiful celebration of love.

The story between Hyong and his wife, Catherine, is beautiful. It's simple. We get to see the relationship from the very beginning where Catherine isn't sure if she wants to fall for Hyong to the very end where Catherine leaves behind Hyong and their two young children and a unit of four becomes three. It's incredibly intimate and you can feel the love that passed between these two people.

I can remember watching coverage of Hyong and his children handing out the love notes (there was a lot of news stories that covered and reported on the event) and thinking how great of a story it was. The book only hits that point home. Between Hyong's background stories on each of the letters and the artists' background stories on why they chose to illustrate the letters in the way that they did, you have a full sensory experience that will pull on your heart.

This is the kind of book that you give a loved one to remind them of all of the different ways that you can love each other. I know this book is going to be high on my gift giving list! This book shows how even the most difficult things can be turned around to create something beautiful!