2022 TOP ROMANCE PICK — If you loved Seven Days in June and The Heart Principle, BEFORE I LET GO by Kennedy Ryan is a MUST READ.
It’s a second chance romance for grown folks. And honestly, it’s everything you could want from a second chance romance, especially one about a divorced couple with two kids who still run a restaurant together. It’s real, it’s sexy, it’s emotional, it’s unafraid. Told in dual first person perspective, it takes on depression and loss and grief from two very different perspectives and delivers character growth that a lot of us can only aspire to in real life. Even if second chance isn’t usually your jam, if any book can change your mind, it’s Before I Let Go.
I’m a reader who doesn’t usually want kids in my romance books, but Yas and Josiah aren’t the only ones impacted by their divorce, no matter how conscious their uncoupling might have been. Seeing how Deja and Kassim have absorbed the divorce and laid blame in very different ways, makes the whole story that much more visceral.
Will it wreck you? Quite possibly, but that’s before it puts you back together. So get the Kleenex ready. Before I Let Go is a book you’ll want to savor and rip through at the same time. It’s a book that celebrates Black love in all its facets and serves up great female friendships, too. Yas’s bestie Hendrix is my favorite, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed she gets her own book.
Don’t sleep on this one.
5 stars
CW: Death of a close parental figure, stillbirth, depression, grief, mother/daughter (teen) tension, varying attitudes about the value of therapy
Kennedy Ryan is on book tour for Before I Let Go with stops at:
NOVEMBER 15 – Raleigh, NC – QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS
NOVEMBER 16 – Atlanta- 44th & 3rd
NOVEMBER 18 – NYC – THE LIT BAR
NOVEMBER 20 – Los Angeles (Culver City) – THE RIPPED BODICE
Get Before I Let Go from The Ripped Bodice | Bookshop.org | IndieBound | Amazon | Apple Books