Amber Smith just gets better and better! You can really see improvement in her writing over time, and this novel was emotional and gutting. She's so good at drawing out a reader's feelings, and I really enjoyed The Last to Let Go. It's nice to have a book that focuses on the aftermath of events. So often a story stops as someone is rescued or removed from their bad situation, but this novel gets into the grief and healing process that comes after a traumatic event. It was SO GOOD.

"...you and me, Brooke, we need to be careful with people. Callie, too."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you have to watch how you treat people. You have to watch how you let people treat you. They're in us, both of them."
 
I have read many many books about abuse. Books about living in abuse and surviving it. Books about child abuse, spousal abuse, and even abuse from strangers. Many books however seem to gloss over the after. Many make it seem like initially its hard but then all better and you are stronger and better than ever. While some of that is true it is never really that simple and that is what I loved about The Last to Let Go.
Amber Smith tackles the after and the loss after child abuse. In The Last to Let Go Brooke struggles with all the hatred, the pain and the very real confusion left in the wake of the abuse being over. The added twist of the mother makes it more difficult but you can feel all the stress pain and coping Brooke, Callie, and Aaron must all do, in their own way, to come out on the other side of everything. The struggle of the pain their father caused, the pain even their mother caused, people's perception who don't understand and even with the fact that not every memory is bad. Brooke who struggles most with all the events must find a way to come out and not follow that same path. That they must be very careful in how they treat other people and how they allow other people to treat them.
This was an amazing read! So real and strong the characters just suck you in and you can't stop until the end! The Last to Let Go is another win for Amber Smith and I can't wait for more. You can feel the heart she puts into every book.

This is a frank and unflinching portrayal of the aftermath of domestic violence. It's a difficult subject in any genre and seems even tougher to handle well in YA. Amber Smith has done a good job with it.

“…you and me, Brooke, we need to be careful with people. Callie, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have to watch how you treat people. You have to watch how you let people treat you. They’re in us, both of them.”



I have read many many books about abuse. Books about living in abuse and surviving it. Books about child abuse, spousal abuse, and even abuse from strangers. Many books however seem to gloss over the after. Many make it seem like initially its hard but then all better and you are stronger and better than ever. While some of that is true it is never really that simple and that is what I loved about The Last to Let Go.
Amber Smith tackles the after and the loss after child abuse. In The Last to Let Go Brooke struggles with all the hatred, the pain and the very real confusion left in the wake of the abuse being over. The added twist of the mother makes it more difficult but you can feel all the stress pain and coping Brooke, Callie, and Aaron must all do, in their own way, to come out on the other side of everything. The struggle of the pain their father caused, the pain even their mother caused, people’s perception who don’t understand and even with the fact that not every memory is bad. Brooke who struggles most with all the events must find a way to come out and not follow that same path. That they must be very careful in how they treat other people and how they allow other people to treat them.
This was an amazing read! So real and strong the characters just suck you in and you can’t stop until the end! The Last to Let Go is another win for Amber Smith and I can’t wait for more. You can feel the heart she puts into every book.


(Also check out her First book The Way I Used to Be)

(Coming soon! Something Like Gravity)

I gave The Last to Let Go a shout on the Barnes and Noble Teen blog! https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/teen/read-based-favorite-current-ya-bestseller/

I have... A lot of mixed feelings about this book. It gave me SO many emotions. It was gripping and fascinating. I mean, I read this on my laptop in the car (AKA terrible conditions) on my birthday, and I was basically sobbing. And yet, some parts and aspects of the story made me intensely uncomfortable (that were not meant to). I really waffled between a 3 and a 4 for my rating when I initially finished it, but I rounded up because what the heck. Birthdays, right? This book is probably super triggering but I'm very intrigued by Amber Smith's writing, and I'll definitely check out her previous book.

I found this book sort of tiresome. Not enough to keep me engaged for a full 300ish pages of depression and abuse.

I found this book on accident really. I couldn't decide what to read so I decided to read a little from each of the ones I had in mind. When I got to this one, I just couldn't stop reading it.

Brooke was supposed to have it easy. Go to a new school and have an easy summer. But one day, that's all changed when she comes home to see that her mom has been arrested for killing her father. Brooke has so much on her plate trying to learn how to keep the family together and everything else. But then she learns the hardest lesson yet- when to let go.

The writing style was what got me. I wasn't expecting to fall into this book and get stuck like I did. I called myself reading only the first chapter and I just couldn't stop reading it. I loved how Smith was able to "show" me Brooke's world instead of just telling me. This is one of my favorite parts of reading, getting lost in the character's world.

However, I wasn't a fan of the MC. It was like a wreck that you couldn't look away from. I felt so bad for her situation, but I also knew that was too much for anyone to go through. Adding on to the fact that she got migraines from stress, (which I can definitely relate to) it was just too much. I wanted to shake her and tell her it didn't have to be that way. But I knew her pride was getting in the way. (However I LOVED Dani and I was not happy about how things went with her....)

I also really liked how Smith handled the tough subject of having a parent in prison, having one pass away, and having one kid witness it. It was such a terrible situation, and I really wanted to hug them all. Especially Callie. I couldn't even imagine what to do in that type of situation. Smith found a good way to handle it all.

I really was expecting to only read the first chapter in this book, but I was sucked into it unexpectedly. Sometimes that makes the best stories. I'm happy that I chose this one to get sucked into.

Covers are always the first thing to catch my eye on a book. I love ones that pop, and leave me guessing what I might find behind that cover. The Last To Let Go by Amber Smith popped at me. That coupled with the description of the book made me want to read it. I was not disappointed.

Amber Smith wrote a story about a young girl, Brooke, who is put into a situation she never could have imagined herself in and it has consequences to her life that ripple outward. For a teenager, Brooke handles her situation well, but has a lot of processing and growing to do. I love how Smith wrote Brooke trying to be strong for her family, but having breakdowns true to an adolescent over her head. I love how Brooke's character is so deep and multi-layered like an onion. The entire story was broken into little tidbits about her personality and watching her grow as an individual.

Domestic abuse is not a topic a lot of people like to touch on and I love that Amber Smith approached it in the way she did, from the eyes of those that are helpless around it. It was heartbreaking, realistic, emotional, and draining. I could not imagine living through this situation.

Smith writes with the ease of someone who has been doing this for decades and knows how to bring the reader into the story and to keep them interested. I would highly recommend The Last To Let Go to anyone who loves a good read that will keep you interested from the very beginning to the very end, but be prepared for emotions and some hard hitting topics. A must read.

“Brooke,” she says more firmly. “We can ask ourselves what if all day long, every day, for the rest of our lives, but I couldn’t help her because she couldn’t deal with the fact that she needed help. I’ve managed to stop blaming myself over the years. I hope you will too.”

3 1/2 stars. The Last To Let Go is a book about letting go of an idea of a perfect life, letting go of the idea that somehow everything will be okay, and learning to make the life you have better, to make it yours.

This is also one of the few books about abuse I have read recently that I have not hated, and for that it deserves some praise. [I am totally serious. It’s like a disease.]

But… listen, this was not really that great. It was a quick read for me and had several good points, but I think I was disappointed.

I want to shout out a few things first. First of all, Brooke!! I really liked her and found her story – though I have a lot of bones to pick – super compelling. As an added benefit – I sort of binged this. And yeah, I definitely appreciated the rep in her being a lesbian, and her girlfriend Dany is so great. I wanted more pagetime for their relationship, but a solid dynamic. 10/10.

Unfortunately… the book just doesn’t really go to the depth I wanted from it. And I think the problem is one of character. Brooke’s character is so closed off that nothing progresses until near the end. And as a result, basically nothing gets discussed until the last thirty pages.

The issue is that Brooke is a somewhat developed character, and an interesting lead as a character desperately struggling to hold on to her family, her voice is not quite strong enough to hold up the story. While I thought initially that her cold, emotionless narrative was a result of her personality or her trauma, it began to bother me quickly when I realized that 1) the telling and not showing did not work for the story and 2) the story stayed on that flat note the whole time.
And holy shit, this flat note and th resulting lack of substance is noticeable in a lot of elements.

✔ The treatment of parental abuse here did not bother me partially because I don’t think it’s really handled that much at all. The main discussion of abuse offered by this book is a secondhand discussion of spousal abuse that I didn’t think did anything new. I really wish we’d gotten more from Amber about how she reacted to her treatment by her dad, because it felt as if that wasn’t actually explored on page. Subtextually? Maybe. On page? No.

✔ And the side characters in this book… also get very little depth. I think Amber Smith tried, but the reality is that we don’t see much actual motivation for most of these characters because Brooke is so focused on herself. And we also don’t see the subtleties of their trauma being shown because the narrative is so cold and tell-tell-tell-tell.

✔ And… then there’s Brooke. See, Brooke felt like a really compelling character, which is why I am so disappointed that we never really saw her. In books like this, there has to be some kind of moment where she drops the armor and you see who she as a person, right? A moment where the audience can see themselves in a mirror, in a different situation or maybe not even that. But The Last To Let Go just never got to that moment of connection with Brooke.

It was just… frustrating. I kept feeling as if the story were on the verge of going there, of giving me everything I wanted and more out of a book… but it just didn’t quite make it there.

Oh well. Maybe next time.
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aaaaand our finale: → elise nitpicks her faves ←
There’s one convo around page 62 where Aunt Jackie gets out a game of scrabble and the kids all say they’ve played it, but only on the computer, which is sort of understandable because of their weird family situation but I’m getting the sense the author just thinks millennials have never played scrabble in real life board form and personally I think this is bullshit? There’s also that one scene where Brooke says “do you mean g-g-g-g…..ga–gay?” and listen, no one talks like that. No one. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Amber Smith makes you rethink what a domestic tragedy looks like. She makes you see the tragedy of a father abusing a mother and driving away an eldest child. She makes you see the glimmer of hope when the mother kills that father. And then she makes you see the tragedy of the legal system not quite agreeing that this was a justified homicide.

I liked how Smith showed Brooke's determination to be independent, even as she desperately needs her brother and sister. Brooke is more than just a confused, conflicted teen. She is someone who cannot, as the title implies, let go.

In Brooke, Smith has a heroine who is intellectually exceptional but emotionally stunted. That Brooke cannot give up her notions of what she thinks she and, particularly, her sister need is not due to any romanticized vision of family but rather a desperation to just feel normal. Normal high school girls don't live with guardians. They don't visit their mothers in prison. They don't bury their fathers because their mothers murdered those fathers. They live at home, with their brothers and sisters.

There are pacing issues in this book, times when the plot lines felt repetitive and slow. This is not a book for people looking to feel happy; the sadness that permeates nearly every page stops that wish in a hurry. Yet Brooke, frustrating though she is on occasion, is someone you dearly hope figures out how to be happy. How to let go.

This was a very hard but impactful read. I haven't read her previous book, but I really hope to sometime in the near future.

This novel was such a roller coaster of emotions! I was pretty intrigued after reading the synopsis, and I ended up really enjoying it. I've been wanting to read more mental health books that deal with abuse. Though I had a few issues with some of the characters and when it came to the plot, I overall was pretty impressed with The Last to Let Go. 

It was really slow and at timesI couldn't help but think that not much was really happening, and it's one of those books you kind of need to push yourself a bit to continue, but once you're halfway through, things start to make sense and take a more solid form. 

It was purely focused on the characters and how each sibbling (or closer family friends and relatives) dealt with loss and death, but mostly since we were reading from Brooke's POV, I knew more what she was feeling and how she tried to deal with what happened at the beginning of the story. That being said, I really loved the development of Brooke's character, and basically how each sibbling reacted differently to the same event. However, sometimes she was quite frustrating and selfish, and I just didn't connect that much with her as I hoped. 

There was also a really adorable f/f romance, and Dani, the love interest, was definitely one of my favourite characters of the book. That romance wasn't the healthiest one with our main character's current situation, but I ended up liking how the author did the whole thing, and I definitely would have loved to see more about them after the last few chapters of the book. 

Somehing I really appreciated was how supportive the mature figures in this book were. I'm so glad after the first few chapters where everything was not the best, I saw healthy and supportive realtionships between adults and those kids. 

I also really liked the ending. Even though it didn't surprised me or shocked me much, I still think it was a really heart wrenching and beautiful. Overall, I think this was a really beautiful book about self discovery and loss, and though I had a few issues with the main character and a few minor things, I still really enjoyed it.

This book is incredibly hard to read.  It deals with the aftermath of abuse far more than it does with the abuse itself. It would be easy to think that now that the abuser is dead, things will mostly be fine---hard, of course, because their mom is in prison, but at least they're together and they don't have to be afraid anymore. Except that's not true. Brooke and her siblings have each internalized different aspects of their parents, and that makes it hard to move on.

This novel shows how easy it can be to continue the cycle of abuse---even if you don't want to, even if you aren't even aware that that's what you're doing. And it shows how important it is to ask for help.

I loved Brooke, even though I didn't always like her. Like her dad, her emotional setting seems to go a lot faster toward "angry" than toward any other emotion. It's easy to understand why this happened (and she uses words instead of fists) but it's still not an easy thing to read.

This book is so important and so necessary. Highly recommended.

The Last to Let Go is an exploration of domestic violence and familial relationships. It centers on Brooke, a junior in high school who comes home to discover that her mother has killed her abusive father. The story follows Brooke and her siblings as their lives are completely uprooted over the course of their mother’s trial.

My favorite thing about this book is that it focuses on domestic violence from the perspective of the kids, not just the abuser or abusee. Children are immensely affected by abuse in the household, yet I feel like theirs is a point of view I never see in these types of stories. The novel also questions how witnessing such behavior could affect their own romantic relationships in the future, which I thought was an interesting topic.

It took me a while to connect with the characters, but they begin to feel more vivid around the halfway mark. I loved the dynamic between the three siblings, even with all of their conflicts. And the way Smith manages to create such nuanced characters, allowing us to empathize even with the most flawed of them, is impressive.

The cast is also satisfyingly diverse, and there is an LGBTQ+ romance in this novel. The romance doesn’t overtake the entire story, but it does offer a nice break from the heavier components of it.

The pacing in this book is a little fast for my liking, though I understand why Smith frames the story the way she does. She wanted it to encompass the entirety of the mother’s trial (and the grieving cycle), and I understand that. I just wish the book had been a bit longer. It would have allowed more room to truly unpack the serious subject matter.

I gave The Last to Let Go a 4 out of 5 star rating on Goodreads. It was an enjoyable read, and it’s definitely an important addition to the Young Adult genre. It hits shelves on February 6th, and I’m telling all of you to go pick it up! Seriously. If you love YA contemporaries with deeper themes than romance, you will not regret it.

Amber Smith's The Way I Used to Be was one of my top reads for 2016. I couldn't get over the fact that a debut author had written such an emotionally raw book. I loved everything about that book. It touched me so deeply. I've been waiting for her next release from the minute I finished that book, so I was very eager to read The Last to Let Go.

Everything about The Last to Let Go was so raw. Brooke had too much to deal with in this book. Her mother killed her abusive father, she's worried about her siblings, she's making unexpected friends, meeting new family members, and she might just be finding love. Everything is more than she can handle. She was doing everything to hold onto her family and what she thought was important.

I felt so bad for Brooke. As much as I wanted her to get herself together, I completely understood why she was falling apart. It broke my heart. Luckily, I've never been in Brooke's situation. It's one I wouldn't wish on anyone. Obviously, I can't relate completely with her life, but I felt like her feelings of needing to control and having a hard time letting go were something everyone can identify with at some point.

The Last to Let Go was so good -- in a painful sort of way. What I mean is that it was utterly heartbreaking. Amber Smith has a way of writing that makes me feel the emotions her characters are feeling. It's breathtaking and it's brutal. The Last to Let Go is a book that's going to stick with me for a long time, and it's one I definitely recommend.

(3.5/5🌟) The Last to Let Go is a beautifully written book about a girl who deals with so much on her shoulders, I detail I can relate to. She feels as if she’s responsible for every little person in her family and never focuses on herself. She’s wanted to leave her whole life and when she gets the opportunity to, she struggles to leave along with everyone else. Her mother is killed her father, who was an abusive man. Brooke never catches a break, and it seems like everything always goes wrong around her. When this big event occurs, she finally has a chance to explore herself and focus on herself for once. She tries so hard to take care of everyone else but now it’s time to focus on only her. This book talks about domestic violence and touches upon the real issue of why so many struggle to leave and the impacts it has on families. Brooke doesn’t let go for so long but finally realizes she can’t make everything perfect. This book is about finding yourself and learning to let go and about the importance of being there for others, even when they refuse the help.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this book as the PDF file wasn't compatible with my kindle.. I do look forward to reading this book in the future..

This book was a Can't-Wait Wednesday pick for me, and my initial thoughts based on the synopsis were that there would be a lot of suffering and loss. I can confirm, that the main character and her siblings suffered a lot in the story, but they also pushed forwards, and as the title states, they let go.

•Pro: Considering this was a book about domestic abuse, there was a strong sense of family woven into the story. After their loss, family and family-like members reached out to help Brooke and her siblings, reconnecting with them after many years. I was happy to watch these relationships grow and flourish as Brooke and her siblings worked through their issues.

•Pro: We shared many painful and beautiful moments with these three siblings. Though their connections were strained, I never doubted their love for each other.

•Pro: I like that this was not a story of abuse. We did witness some abuse through flashbacks, but the bulk of the story was the aftermath. Brooke had to deal with the emotional damage, as well as, manage her life without her parents. Don't get me wrong, this was painful, but I appreciate the focus on the recovery versus the battle to survive.

•Con: Although hopeful, the ending left me a little wanting. I watched these three kids struggle throughout the book and would have liked a few more questions answered.

•Pro: Thank you, Amber Smith, for giving us Dani and Tyler. They provided most of the bright spots in this story, and I really needed those moments.

•Pro: This was a tough and honest look at the cycle of abuse. Brooke's grandparents were abused or abusers, and her parents ended up being abused or abusers. By the end of this book, I felt hopeful that the cycle would end here for this family. Brooke and her sister were getting professional help, they were talking about what happened, and were receiving care and support, which had previously been missing.

•Pro: Witnessing Brooke trying to hold onto her past life brought tears to my eyes, because the harder she tried to keep things the same, the more she unraveled. I breathed a sigh of relief, when she finally came to terms with the situation, and, as her siblings had, let go.

•Pro: Brooke was a fighter, no doubt, and I was rooting for her the whole time. She made mistakes. She paid for her mistakes, but she grew and came out stronger from this ordeal.

Overall: This was a beautifully written book about something very ugly. My heart broke over and over again as Brooke tried to hold onto the past with both hands. However, my heart was mended, when she ultimately found solace by letting go.

Unfortunately I was unable to read this book as the PDF file wasn't compatible with my kindle.. I do look forward to reading this book in the future.