The Last Letter from your Lover : Book Review

A few weeks ago I shared my latest book haul with you and most of my comments were asking me to review the books once I'd finished them, so without further ado here's my first book review for Jojo Moyes' The Last Letter from your Lover.

I am a huge fan of Jojo Moyes, her novel Me before You is my favourite book of all time, so I knew I was in safe hands when reading this book. The Last Letter from your Lover tells the story of two women, Jennifer and Ellie, who share something in common although their stories are set 40 years apart. Both Jennifer and Ellie are involved in secret love affairs- Jennifer is in love with a different man to whom she's married, whereas Ellie is in love with a married man. The book tells the story of both womens' love affairs and how their stories intertwine.

The novel is set in three parts- the first two tell the story of Jennifer. Instantly we discover that Jennifer has been involved in a car accident and can't remember anything of her previous life. What I loved about Jennifers story was that, because she had lost her memory, you felt like you were finding out everything about her life with her. The narrative jumped between before and after her accident, and between different characters.Because of this I was never sure whether the other characters were telling the truth, or it was just Jennifer's bad memory, but the uncertainty lead to many shocking twists and turns throughout the novel and kept me gripped all the way through. 

Through the first two parts of the novel you find out about Jennifers love affair with Anthony, yet what I loved about this novel was that their story wasn't concluded by part 3 when the narrarative jumped to Ellie's story 40 years later, so you were still kept gripped as you read to find out what happened to them. During Ellie's part of the novel she is dealing with her own demons as she continues an affair with a married man, and desperatly tries to hold on to her job as a journalist. It's through her job that she finds the love letters sent between Jennifer and Anthony in the 1960s, and she spends the rest of the novel piecing together what happened to them, whilst still dealing with her own love story.

I loved that this book switched between characters and time peirods so quickly as it kept me interested and reading the whole way through. Both womens stories could have made a book on their own, but intertwining them made the book more refreshing and entertaining. I read the book pretty quickly, after only a few chapters I was hooked and found it difficult to put down! One final thing to note is the snippets of love letters that begin every chapter. Jennifer and Anthony's affair is built around the love letters they send to each other so Jojo Moyes began each chapter with a snippet of anoynomous and famous peoples love letters to each other that I thought was a genius idea and really in keeping with the mood of the novel. My favourite was Zelda's letter to F.Scott Fitzgerald 'I love you anyway-enen if there isn't any me or any love or even any life- I love you.'

Overall I loved this book and would definitely recommend it if you love reading love stories set over different time periods! Have you been reading any great books recently?