One of the podcasts I follow, Bad on Paper, announces a book each month for listeners to read and then towards the end of that month, the hosts, Olivia and Becca, discuss in a book club style episode. Usually I don’t read the book that they select, even though I will still listen to the episode because I enjoy listening to people talk about books. This month, however, the book they selected piqued my interest.

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan is a heavy, contemporary romance set in Atlanta. We join the main characters, Josiah and Yasmine, in medias res (sorry…recovering English major…), as they walk through a two year old divorce and a blanket of trauma from loss. They co-parent a teen and pre-teen, both old enough feel the weight of the emotional blanket, but not old enough to understand how to sort out how to carry it. They also co-own a successful (but not always) restaurant, Grits, that, frankly, feels like it’s own character in this story.

Throughout the visceral prose, we, as the reader, absorb the raw feelings that exude from the page. Kennedy doesn’t waste one word, painting a masterpiece so real that you’d think it was a true story. One of my favorite moments was in the beginning when Yasmin and Josiah are in a particularly sexually charged, awkward moment in the restaurant office. Yasmin’s mind runs away from her and, as I sometimes do when I’m uncomfortable, she spits out the first thing she thinks of and asks Josiah if he’s watched Ozark. I felt that moment in my heart. There are so many moments like this in the book.

Mental health is cradled like a baby and addressed in way that I haven’t seen before. It’s not extreme, which seems like a tempting plot device, right? Instead, this story navigates a more real world take on suicidal ideation, postpartum depression, grief, and how brains operate differently for different people when they take on these challenges. Kennedy doesn’t shy away from writing full therapy sessions into the story and also notes how finding a therapist can be a bumpy road, full of gaslighting and bad advice, until you find the right one.

Surprisingly, I didn’t cry when I was reading this story. I’m not sure why. The words that Kennedy used to describe certain scenes and the way characters reflecting on emotional moments, mirrored the ways that I have described my own feelings in similar moments. You would think that would trigger some strong reactions. Maybe I felt safe in these moments, as if I trusted Kennedy not to just drop the reader off the cliff into the desperate unknown.

I highly recommend this book. That said, I wanted to give it five stars, but I just wasn’t a fan of the ending. Without giving it away, I guess I would just say that I would have liked it to be more vague? I don’t know if that makes sense. So, I give this book 4.5/5 stars.

Let me know if you’ve read this book and, if so, what you thought. I’m looking forward to hearing the episode that Bad on Paper puts out discussing this book. I wonder if they felt the same way that I did about the ending.