The Last Letter

Yarros tells the agonizing yet heartwarming contemporary story of a military man and a single mom trying to find love and happiness in each other despite devastating losses and an explosive secret. Ella’s brother, Ryan, who’s stationed overseas with the Army, asks her to write to his lonely best friend, a fellow soldier nicknamed Chaos. Ella, who runs a resort in Colorado, and Chaos fall for each other through letters. When Ryan is killed in action, Chaos blames himself and can’t read Ella’s letters or write to her anymore—until he receives Ryan’s last letter, written to be given to Chaos in the event of his death. It asks Chaos to help his sister, since she now has no living family. Still afraid to face her, he stays at her resort under his real name, Beckett. Ella is a single mother to five-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, and discovers her daughter has late-stage neuroblastoma. Beckett explains that he was a friend of Ryan’s—though he keeps his nickname a secret—and insists he will help care for her children no matter how long he is needed. But even the spectre of a child’s death may not be enough for him to admit he was Ella’s pen pal. Thanks to Yarros’s beautiful, immersive writing, readers will feel every deep heartbreak and each moment of uplifting love in this tearjerker romance. Agent: Louise Fury, Bent Agency. (Mar.)