Showing 1-4 out of 7 reviews. Previous | Next

• I'm so very much in love with this book. I knew I would be. I've been waiting for it for over a year ever since I saw it in an IMM post at Bookalicous Ramblings. It's previously been published in the UK but the US publication is finally coming this July and a book fairy was kind enough to send a copy my way. And oh oh oh. What a beautiful book. Jennifer Stirling is the ideal wife for a well-to-do business man in the 1960s. She's beautiful, charming, unassuming and docile, the perfect little trophy to accent her husband Larry's picture perfect life. Only she doesn't remember any of it since the car accident. She knows who she's suppose to be, and the role she's suppose to play in her life but she can't remember what it felt like to belong in it. Maybe it's because she never did. As she recovers and steps back into a life she can't even recollect, she begins to search for some shred of evidence that she was once a part of it. Jennifer finds a letter folded between the pages of a book that hints of a secret life and a passion that clearly doesn't exist inside her marriage. The letter, signed only "B" was the first of several she finds hidden amongst her things. Each fervent, ardent proclamation of love finds Jennifer recapturing the sense of self that she hasn't been able to find inside her cookie cutter life, because it was never there. Who she really is exists only in her wildly romantic affair with the mysterious "B". This book will make you crazy. In a good way. The story, which spans forty-three years has the torturous element of switching to a past or future moment just when...just when you finally think something wonderful is about to happen. Moyes makes you live each day with Jennifer, both past and future before she gives you the happy ending that by this point, you simply must have to find peace and fulfillment in your own life. You want this story to turn out perfect. I can imagine that it would even be difficult for a non-romantic to not feel the amazing pull this story has on the heart. It's that powerful. And if you're lacking a little faith in love at the moment, it can heal you. Books can = medicine. (This is not an endorsement to stop taking your crazy pills and live solely on book-love, you nut. :) Merely suggested as an adjunct.) My adoration of the main character built slowly. From the start, which for her was when she woke up from the accident, she was unaccepting of her place in life. She knew it didn't fit; that she wasn't so two dimensional. Her unwavering belief that she simply could not be the person her life expected her to be earned my respect. In her social class and situation, at that time, one did not simply leave a secure home, family and friends to run off with a lover. The fact that she did it anyway, despite the ostracism it earned her made me cheer for her. I couldn't have been a "kept" wife, smiled, be well-coiffed and never have an opinion on anything. There's one instance in the book where Jenny and Larry are at a dinner party and Jenny attempts to join in a conversation concerning French politics and her husband basically tells her to shut up and not talk about things she knows nothing about. I would have smacked him- but well before that I would have already been branded a loud, wild, shameless hussy. In the very middle of our story, just to make you squirm, Moyes jumps to 2003, where a struggling journalist named Ellie finds B's letters. She herself is involved, rather unsuccessfully, with a married man and Jenny's story sheds some new light on her own. She learns that while frantically trying to hold on to a deteriorating love, she's denying herself the opportunity to feel a bit of what Jenny felt for B. Sometimes it's not too late to fix the stupid in our lives. Put it on your to-read list. Wait for it. Think about it often. When it finally arrives, give it a big hug hello because you're going to be the very best of friends.

  5.00 out of 5

  lifeafterjane

• This book came out in Australia around Christmas time last year and to be honest, it really didn’t appeal to me. It looked very chick lit and soppy. However, the American cover enticed me more and I had heard good things about this book, so I successfully applied to receive a Net Galley of this book. Boy, I’m so glad that I did. This is a highly emotional love story that keeps you reading well into the night without being over the top. I was really pleased with this book, and highly recommend it to those that like a well written story with detailed characters, drama and plenty of obstacles. I also think that this would make a great movie.This book opens with Jennifer, the protagonist, recovering in hospital after a nasty car accident where the driver was killed. Her problem is that she has amnesia of the events prior and must get to know her husband, friends and home all over again. As time goes on, Jennifer starts to feel that something isn’t quite right, but no-one will tell her anything. She then finds letters hidden in her house addressed to her, love letters signed by B. Who is B? The story then moves back to the time before Jennifer’s accident and how she and B fell in love and planned to leave her dreary suburban life for him. Unfortunately, a number of unfortunate instances occur and things don’t happen as planned…In the present day, Ellie is a journalist at the same newspaper as B, stuck in a dead end relationship with a novelist. She discovers the love letters as the newspaper plans to move buildings and decides to make it a feature. During this time, she learns from Jennifer the strength of relationships and what it is to really be in love. I thought Ellie’s character was a little less engaging than Jennifer, but they are products of different times – Ellie seems much looser and flippant in comparison. Ellie is also instrumental in the ending of the book and the third section provides some lighter relief from the tortured relationship of Jennifer and B. This book was excellently written and produced a great feeling of raw emotion, especially when it wasn’t done to do so (1960’s upper middle class London). It’s more than chick lit, it’s a fine, classy story that you shouldn’t pass by. I couldn’t put this book down, not even when wandering about the house!

  5.00 out of 5

  birdsam0610

• The Last Letter from Your Lover is an engrossing book that tells a love story that spans over 40 years. The book begins in the life of a wealthy young couple in the 1960s. Jennifer Stirling has just been in a car accident and has lost her memories. She finds letters that indicate the existence of a love beyond her marriage. The first part of the book drifts back and forth telling the story of that affair as it happens and her attempts after her accident to recover those memories. It is almost as if we learn of the events as she regains those memories also. It puts the reader in the book. The remainder of the book tells a more chronological story about 40 years later. You can see the ending coming, but that does not make it any less enjoyable.

  4.00 out of 5

  njmom3

• I'm going to be honest and say that until I finished this novel, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. The Last Letter From Your Lover by JoJo Moyes is the kind of book that you think, OK, this book is all right, and since I read it everyday on my Kindle on the treadmill, I just stuck with it.I'm glad I did, because the manner in which Moyes ties everything together in the end is so rewarding and there is one moment that is so jawdropping, I almost fell off the treadmill; I did not see that one coming. (And I like to think that I have read so many novels, there is not much that could surprise me.)Moyes begins her story in London in 1964, where Jennifer is in a hospital recovering from a horrible car accident. She has no memory of her life and doesn't know her own husband. When her memory doesn't return, she lives in a kind of nowhere-land, only knowing what her husband and friends tell her about her life.Until the day she finds a love letter to her from a man named B. Apparently she was in love with him, and they were planning to run away together. She has no memory of him or this letter, but she feels something inside that tells her it is true.This story is intercut with Ellie, a young writer for a London newspaper, unhappily involved with a married man. She is on the verge of losing her job when she finds B's love letter to Jennifer and believes that there is a story there.Even though almost 50 years has passed, Ellie tries to track down Jennifer and B, and her hope is that they have been together all this time, thereby proving that true love is possible.There are so many writers who use the conceit of two different stories in two different times, sometimes it can be, "oh, no, not again", but Moyes uses it to tie her novel together in a meaningful way that serves the story well.B and Jennifer's love story is star-crossed to say the least, and the mystery of will they get together or not propels the plot forward, and I couldn't wait to find out the answer.The characters are well-rounded, the writing seductive and the style of dress and copious drinking from 1964 is very Mad Men-like and trendy now. Moyes took awhile to entrance me with her love story, but when the book ended, I wanted to stand up and applaud. Well done, indeed!

  4.00 out of 5

  bookchickdi

Reviews provided by Librarything.

No reviews here.