Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - The Last Love Note

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

The Last Love Note by Emma Grey

15 reviews

syvanahlouise's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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alyse_turns_pages's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Author Emma Grey takes us alongside Kate while she walks down the road of being newly widowed. Her journey with grief is a fragile one as she must maintain a sense of strength and stability for their young son Charlie. I know from personal experience how debilitating grief can be and the dark thoughts that come with it—living life with one foot straddling heaven and the other earthside leaves you with a nagging guilt that is unbearable.

I deeply appreciated that a light was shone on how friends, family & yes even strangers can help support someone during times of tragedy. Hugh was an exemplary example of just sitting beside someone in their grief. Yes, he did do much more than that but at his core, he wasn’t afraid of Kate’s emotions and he wasn’t afraid to simply sit with her while she felt them.

There are many, many quotes that readers who have endured a loss like this will cling to…just that same feeling Kate had with Hugh…”Yes. This person knows exactly what this feels like.” “I’m not alone in my grief.”

Despite this story being heavily focused on what it's like to tragically lose someone you love, it is a redeeming story of how life can still be beautiful. How loss doesn’t define us but simply becomes a part of us, a piece that we will carry forever.

Thank you Emma for writing this novel, and thank you for sharing bits and pieces of your husband through Cam and Hugh. Thank you for sharing your heart. Thank you for allowing us to sit beside you in your grief, and simultaneously sitting beside mine as well.

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hjeffreys's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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bedtimesandbooks's review

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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martasbooktherapy's review

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Emma Grey clearly wrote what she knows in this novel - the lessons and reflections on grief and loss are so poignant they left me reeling.

Kate is struggling. She’s raising her 5 year old son alone after losing her young husband to a debilitating disease. She’s trying to keep her head above water with the help of her best friend and mum, and her understating boss Hugh. Two years after her husband’s death, however, she’s still deeply in the grips of grief and can’t figure out what to do next.

With a little help from the closest people in her life, Kate starts to realize there is more out there in the world for her. She wants to figure out who she is and where she wants to be. Lovely and heartbreaking yet hopeful throughout (with some laugh out loud anecdotes sprinkled in), The Last Love Note gave me all kinds of feelings.

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heathers426's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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cc_shelflove's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

What a devastating novel! It was amazing to read in the acknowledgements just how many pieces of Emma Grey herself were included in this story. Kate’s husband died two years ago, and she wonders if she will ever be able to remove herself from an unending spiral of grief. Can she open her heart to Hugh, a friend who has been there through every step of her loss, and a man who will drop everything for someone in need? I felt that the scattered timeline of this novel took away from the story at times, but even still, the pages had my emotions flickering between sadness and laughter. I definitely teared up a couple of times. I would recommend this for fans of Abby Jimenez—that woman always rips my heart out.

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juliacooperrock's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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nerdygnome's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was a tough read emotionally. There's something about the theme of spousal death that is extra hard for me — not from personal experience, I just prefer to deny that it's a possible reality. That said, this book got me in all the right places. The way grief is portrayed is so genuine that it hurts, and I wasn't at all surprised to hear Emma Grey share her personal experience with spousal grief in her author's notes.

Two years after the loss of her husband Cam, Kate is still deep in her grief processing and not sure she can ever love another man. Keeping herself busy and distracted with her young son and demanding job, it isn't until she's stranded by a diverted airline flight that she truly lets her grief in, with her boss Hugh getting a center-row seat to the implosion.

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astoriareader's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

SYNOPSIS:

Kate is a widow & a single mom. Her husband, Cam, passed away, and she’s understandably struggling.
She has a great support system. Her mother, her best friend, Grace, and her boss, Hugh, are her inner circle.
She works at a university fundraising job, and she is traveling with Hugh for work. Due to some in flight issues, Hugh and Kate end up having a weekend on the east coast of Australia when the plane reroutes. With this weekend, she finally has some time to figure out what she wants in her life.

MY THOUGHTS

Full disclosure: this isn’t my usual genre, so I do think avid readers of romance genre will enjoy this more than I did.
I give the author major kudos for writing a story that is so personal to her own journey. In the acknowledgement section of the book, she mentioned she is a widow herself.
The book covers some tough topics, like being a widow, grief, and learning to love again.
The writing was okay, but overall, the story felt predictable & had a lot of cliches. I didn’t feel like there was a whole lot of character development, and they felt very one-dimensional.

TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️decent read. not my usual genre. predictable with lots of cliches.

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