The Last Letter

It's been a while since a book has made me this angry. I'm struggling with what to rate it. I was sure it'd be a 4/5 star read up until the last 10% or so. I really dislike when authors add a twist to the story just for shock value. It adds nothing to the story or to the development of the characters, especially when it happens at 90%, at which point most books should be wrapping up nicely. Not this one though.

As if things weren't tragic enough for the main character with having all of her family be dead and her husband walk out on her while pregnant with twins, let's kill her brother in action, give her daughter an aggressive form of cancer, and then the cherry on top, let's kill her other child for the heck of it. No thank you, Rebecca Yarros.

I'd only recommend this if you like to torture yourself. Otherwise, steer clear.

Wow. Rebecca, hope you dont mind me using your first name, but respectfully. Fuck you. Wow that book hurt me. How much heartache do you need to put your characters through? I LOVED the story up until the last i dunno, 30 pages ish?

Spoilers ahead, and I mean it.

The story is about Ella (single mom of twins aged 5 ish), and Beckett(aka Chaos). Beckett and Ella's brother were in the military together, when her brother(Ryan) suggests that Emma start writing letters to Chaos because he might be lonely. The letters between Ella and Beckett are really cute, and sprinkled through the book, and our of order. I really enjoyed that. So Ryan dies, and all the men in the unit have a “last letter” they have given to their commanding officer to hold onto in case they you know, die. Ryan's later letter was to Beckett, and he asked Beckett to go to Telluride, CO and watch after his sister. Cute right. So Beckett shows up, and doesnt tell Ella that hes Chaos. It evolves to this big elaborate thing that she does find out about eventually, and shes not happy. All the while shes dealing with one of her twins having cancer, a neuro blastoma. I thought this was gonna be what got me, but its NOT. As a mom of a currently 4 and 6 year old, the death of one of he children really just blew me straight into a sobbing mess. This death added NOTHING to the story, to the love story, and im so fucking pissed off about it. So 2 stars because up until that point it would have been a 5 star book. Because theres no HEA when one of your children dies.