BEFORE I LET GO (Skyland #1) by KENNEDY RYAN

“You don’t love me anymore?”
” I can’t find it. I can’t find us. It’s buried under all this pain.”
“It’s not buried. I don’t have to look for it. I don’t want a divorce. I love you, Yas, and you love me.”

As far as second-chance romances go, the divorced/reconciliation theme is one of our favourites. There’s something so achingly painful, and sad in these stories, yet at the same time, we’re filled with eternal optimism for the couple concerned. We live and breathe their pain, their love, and their sorrow, all whilst eagerly awaiting that moment when they (hopefully) reconcile.

In Before I Let Go, Kennedy Ryan has encompassed everything we love in this trope. Yasmen and Josiah Wade’s journey is as agonising as it is beautiful. As hopeful as it is hopeless, and it’s told with such honesty and emotion, you can’t help but take this story of story of love, hope, and healing to your heart.

‘There is only one letter of difference between love and loss, and somewhere along the way, for me they became synonymous.”

Josiah and Yasmen had the world at their feet, love in their hearts, and future ambitions when they were attending college together. Both were on the same page, their life could only prosper and become the dream they so desperately wanted it to be until it wasn’t.

‘I wondered if this—-finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—-was the stuff happily ever afters were made of.’

It’s three years since a series of gut-wrenching losses left Josiah and Yasmen’s marriage in tatters. They’re divorced and at the stage when they are starting to think about moving on, yet there is unresolved hurt they have never dealt with, and a simmering love that still burns within their hearts.

‘How do you breathe when the person you thought you’d cherish forever looks at you the way Yasmen looks at me right now because you’ve hurt them so much?’

Caught in the middle are their children thirteen-year-old Deja who seems resentful of her mother, clashing at every opportunity, and ten-year-old Kassim, who is very much like his dad in tramping down his thoughts and feelings.

With their children’s interests at the forefront of their future decisions, as well as being co-owners of their very successful restaurant Grits, in their affluent suburb of Downtown Skyland, Josiah and Yasmen’s lives are still very much intertwined, yet simmering beneath is a mountain of unsaid words, unshed feelings and a heartful of hurt.

“No one in my whole life has ever hurt me like you did.”

In Before I Let Go, Kennedy Ryan beautifully explores the complexity of loving a person, whilst feeling so much hurt and loss, and she doesn’t hold back in probing the situations that prove so difficult to approach and discuss. Eliciting heartfelt emotion during moments that had profound effects on both Josiah and Yasmen, and in return, us as readers. A truly thought-provoking second-chance love story.

‘She’s changing, aging, but to me, only getting better. Like God looked at her, and said, you think she looks good now? I’m just getting started.’