Author: Rebecca Yarros
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Publication Date: February 26, 2019
Source: ARC from the publisher
If you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have.
I need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride.
My little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair.
And here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.
So if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family.
Please don’t make her go through it alone.
Rebecca Yarros is a hopeless romantic and lover of all things chocolate, coffee, and Paleo. In addition to being a mom, military wife, and blogger, she can never choose between Young Adult and New Adult fiction, so she writes both. She's a graduate of Troy University, where she studied European history and English, but still holds out hope for an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Her blog, The Only Girl Among Boys, has been voted the Top Military Mom Blog the last two years, and celebrates the complex issues surrounding the military life she adores. When she's not writing, she's tying on hockey skates for her kids, or sneaking in some guitar time. She is madly in love with her army-aviator husband of eleven years, and they're currently stationed in Upstate NY with their gaggle of rambunctious kiddos and snoring English Bulldog, but she would always rather be home in Colorado.
Even though The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros is just now coming out, it was still 2018 when I read it and it was honestly the best book I read all year. This book was written from the standpoint of someone who knows, who has been there and it shows.
At first glance, this appears to be a story about a single mom who loses her last bit of family to war and the buddy who was asked to watch over her small family. The more I read, the more I realized that this was more Beckett's journey than Ella's, especially the last half of the book.
I am going to attempt to tread carefully here because I do not want to spoil anything, however, you will definitely want to have your tissues near you as you read. I am not a crier, but I had ugly tears at one point of this book. I was at work and was pretty inconsolable for a short while. Because it is sad, yes, but also because it is just so stunning and beautiful.
Ella's journey is filled with rocky uphill battles but she demonstrates the strength of the human spirit. Ella and her children, Colt and Maisie, are such incredible human beings. This whole book is packed with their resilience and indomitable joy in the face of overwhelming adversity. The reason I say that this is more Beckett's book than Ella's is because he is there to witness and learn from this small family.
After all the horrors of war and losing his best friends, Beckett really has little drive to do much more than fulfill his friend's last request. It is through watching Ella and her children spread joy and continue to pursue their dreams despite roadblocks, that Beckett begins to come alive. He realizes that life does go on and that he can have a hand in how it is experienced. He begins to see that he can have joy in his own life, even after the his incredible loss.
I do not approve of the way that Beckett hides some truths from Ella. I do appreciate that it needed to be done, but I just had to say it.
I loved this book from beginning to end and I'll recommend it until my dying day. This book is life-changing and I'm a better person for having read it. Thank you, Rebecca for sharing this amazing gift with us.
5 out of 5 stars
Billy Raffoul - Until the Hurting is Gone
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