THE LAST LETTER by REBECCA YARROS

“Thank you,” I said quietly, knowing he couldn’t hear me. “Thank you for her.”

Sometimes our reading mood demands a real tearjerker, a highly emotional story we hope will deliver those heart-wrenching emotions we ache for. So there’s nothing more rewarding than picking up a book that delivers the exact emotions we’re craving. What’s even more rewarding is picking up a new to us author and falling completely in love with their story. Yes, The Last Letter shredded our hearts, yes it left us sobbing wrecks, but there’s no denying we felt every single moment of Rebecca Yarros’ story.

“Sometimes bad things happen. And there’s no blame to be placed. You can’t reason with the universe, no matter how sound your logic is. And we can either breathe through the pain or we can let it shape us.“

The Last Letter is a testament to love, a tribute to the strength of the human spirit to overcome the most painful and tragic of circumstances, and it’s a story of friendship, loyalty of knowing we are all capable and worthy to love and be loved and to never take a moment for granted. It’s a story that’s exquisitely told in its brutal honesty and execution by an author who, we can only guess, bled these words. Yes, it’s sad, yes it had us in a flood of tears, yes it left us reeling from the feelings it elicited in us because Rebecca Yarros ensured we were so connected to these characters the pain we experienced was authentic and monumental.

“We fight. She fights. And when she’s too tired to fight, then you do what you can to fight for her, because this is an all-out war.”

Twenty four-year-old Ella MacKenzie, a single Mum at nineteen to gorgeous five-year-old twins Maisie and Colt, has known a lot of heartaches and waged many internal battles in her short years, but nothing would prepare her for the long gruelling and painful fight ahead of her. Being left to bring up her babies on her own, establishing Solitude, her B&B in Telluride, young Ella hasn’t had it easy.

“You miss it.”
“Every day.”
“Then why are you still here? Why did you leave.”
He rolled his head toward me with a sad smile. “Sometimes you have to leave so you can know what it is you left. You don’t really value something until you’ve lost it.”

Twenty eight year old Beckett Gentry is used to a life of solitude. Passed through the foster system after being abandoned by his mum as a child, Beckett has avoided emotional ties, preferring to live a nomadic existence with his military buddies, the only family he has ever known. He’d lay down his life for them, and the only thing he is committed to his dog, Havoc.  Oh, and what a man Beckett was! He was everything! Strong, commanding, resilient, reliable and handsome as hell with a giving and loving heart.

‘In case no one ever told you – you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.’

Coerced by his army buddy Ryan, Beckett begins corresponding with Ryan’s sister Ella never realising how deep their bond would go, or how Ella and her children would become the sole focus of his life. For Ella and Beckett, the letters provide an outlet, a place to expose their fears, feelings, hopes and dreams. For the reader, the letters provided the backstory as we live in the present, and relive the past through their correspondence and hell, didn’t these letters have us in tears. We felt the excruciating pain from both, we fell in love with the tenderness revealed within their words and the way in which they unashamedly poured their hearts out to one another. Two souls linked before they’d even met.

‘She was a thousand different kisses in one woman, the soft and tender, the deep and passionate, the hard and desperate. I never knew who I was taking in my arms, and yet they were all Ella.
Everything was Ella.’

We don’t want to reveal any more of the story as the author has chosen to be vague with the synopsis and we believe the moments we didn’t predict held the impact they did because we were unprepared for, and unaware of the heartbreak we were about to experience, just as a real tearjerker story should.

‘Being scared means you have something to lose, and I’ve never really had that.’

The Last Letter is a life story as much as it is a love story. It’s an experience as much as it is a read, a journey as much as it is a soul searching and provoking message. We shared every moment with characters who were flawed, real, and whose story was told by an author who really understood what it means to be honest in her storytelling, no matter how painful it is. The military scenes spoke of an author who knows the effect this life has on the soldier and their loved ones, of that there is no doubt. Rebecca Yarros made us believe every word she wrote, with the underlying secrecy between Beckett and Ella creating a potent shroud around the story which only added to the tangible unease we felt throughout.

‘Although I couldn’t’ tell her, I loved this woman. I would take on armies for her, kill for her, or die for her. There was no truth greater than that.’

If you’re in the mood for a story that will have you experiencing an agonising, hopeful, beautiful and intense rollercoaster of emotions, The Last Letter is a book you need to grab now!

Releasing Tuesday 26th February.