"Feeling Sorry for Celia" is Moriarty's debut novel and the second book I've read by this author. Looking back, I probably should have read this book first, before "The Year of Secret Assignments," because they both are set in the same "world," have common characters, and reading "Feeling Sorry for Celia" first would have probably helped me to understand events in the second novel better. However, these two books are not a part of a series, they are completely independent novels, so reading them out of order wasn't that much of a problem in the end I suppose.

My opinion about this book is pretty much the same as about "The Year of Secret Assignment," probably because they are very similar. Not only they both are written entirely in letters, notes, and diaries, but the themes are the same too - friendships found through forced correspondence between two rivaling schools, family troubles, psychological volatility of some characters, teen romance. I still don't get the lighter, funnier parts of the book. They seems just too weird for me, I don't know why. But the parts dealing with "serious" issues are very well done.

I don't think I would whole-heartedly recommend Moriarty's books to any of my reading friends, but personally I am very drawn to them. It probably has something to do with the epistolary format...