Letting Go by Molly McAdams

Title: Letting Go
Series: Thatch
Author: Molly McAdams
Genres: New Adult

Grey and Ben fell in love at thirteen and believed they’d be together forever. But three days before their wedding, the twenty-year-old groom-to-be suddenly died from an unknown heart condition, destroying his would-be-bride’s world. If it hadn’t been for their best friend, Jagger, Grey never would have made it through those last two years to graduation. He’s the only one who understands her pain, the only one who knows what it’s like to force yourself to keep moving when your dreams are shattered. Jagger swears he’ll always be there for her, but no one has ever been able to hold on to him. He’s not the kind of guy to settle down.

It’s true that no one has ever been able to keep Jagger—because he’s only ever belonged to Grey. While everyone else worries over Grey’s fragility, he’s the only one who sees her strength. Yet as much as he wants Grey, he knows her heart will always be with Ben. Still they can’t deny the heat that is growing between them—a passion that soon becomes too hot to handle. But admitting their feelings for each other means they’ve got to face the past. Is being together what Ben would have wanted . . . or a betrayal of his memory that will eventually destroy them both?

Thoughts: Molly McAdams is a masterful story teller with the ability to rip our heart apart and put it back together stronger than ever. In Letting Go she not only rips it apart she reaches into our chest and pulls our heart out, stomps it on the ground, tosses it around and just when you think that it can’t possibly take anymore she starts to fix  the damage she’s done to our hearts and then makes it so much stronger.

Grey isn’t a complicated character, she’s done what I imagine I would do if I’d been in the same situation. Barely survived. But it’s now time for her to leave the apartment they’d picked out for their senior year of college and return home. For the time being she’ll be living with her parents (okay I have to say that I absolutely adored her parents and older brother, the scenes with them in it are some of my favorites) on top of that she has no clue what she’s going to do with her shiny new college degree. When she walks into Jagger’s studio and discovers him drawing her, it makes her question everything she thought she knew about him.

Jagger has got to be one of my absolute favorite heroes I’ve read. He’s so freaking awesome. He’s been in love with Grey since he was 13 but because she was with his best friend he never made a move on her. Even though Ben has been gone for a year he isn’t sure that he wants to rock the boat they are currently in. He’d rather have her as his friend than not have her at all. When she walks into his studio and catches him drawing her, he reveals everything and loses her.

One of the things I liked about this story was how Grey and Ben’s relationship impacted so many people without them knowing it, and when Grey has to decide about her and Jagger the people that were there with her Ben and Jagger reveal things to Grey that makes her look at her relationship with not just Jagger but Ben in a new light.

Not everyone in their town however is happy for them when they finally get together and throw some pretty awful things in Grey and Jagger’s path to HEA. One of them you can see right away once that person in introduced, but the other, man that one snuck up on me and had me going back and re-reading scenes.

Like always McAdams delivers a story that makes you feel everything the characters are going though and then some. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series, I really hope it’s Jagger’s little sister that girl deserves some happiness.

Grade A