latenight_pageturner 's review for:

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan

5.0

emotional hopeful inspiring 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: Complicated

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This was so beautiful and I have no idea why I waited so long to read it?!?!?! I didn't think I would be so moved. There was pain, heartache, love, and spice! Kennedy Ryan delivered a phenomenal read that explores grief and it's impact. There were moments that took me by surprise and I found myself tearing up and wanting to give myself a hug!

Yasmen and Josiah have been divorced for two years after their family endures a sequence of tragic events which led both parents into emotional states of distress with neither one knowing how to help the other. Different coping/avoidant strategies fractured their family and now Josiah and Yasmen are figuring out how to co-parent and be business partners while also working on their own healing. This is a second-chance romance, not just for two lovers who were blindsided by life, but it's also an intimate story about self-forgiveness and compassion.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Grief

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Dementia

The sexual content is graphic, but it isn't explicit or smutty. It's descriptive and intimate. There is a brief description and several references to an incident in which the FMC suffers a miscarriage. The event itself is detailed maybe once or twice, but there are a lot of references to the loss and a lot of the tension is because of how the characters deal with the grief in the aftermath of this and another character death that is also heavily referenced. The emotional distress of these events leads to a character having suicidal ideations that are not detailled, just referenced