One Last Gift by Emily Stone – Blog Tour

A huge thanks to Anne Cater for organising this tour and to Emily Stone, Headline Books and Netgalley for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis

Take a heartwrenching and uplifting romantic journey, from London to the Hamptons to the south of France and the Welsh mountains, with the author of Always, in December.
For as long as Cassie can remember, it had been the three of them: Cassie, her big brother Tom, and Tom’s annoying best friend Sam.
Now, Tom is sorted, Sam is flying high, and Cassie thinks she’s figured it all out. Then tragedy happens and three becomes two. For Cassie picking herself up seems unimaginable. Until she finds an envelope addressed to her, asking her to follow the trail to one last gift…

And suddenly what seems like an ending leads Cassie to something unexpected, beautiful and new..

My Thoughts

Be warned! This is a romance book with a Christmassy theme running through it however, it is not all cosy and romancey. It’s a heartbreaker in paces and deals with grief several times, loss of family and difficult relationships.

Cassie and Tom lost their parents at a young age and moved in with their aunt – who wasn’t exactly nurturing. Tom’s friend Sam has a tough home life too and together they make a little family until she becomes estranged from Sam and tragedy strikes when Tom is accidentally killed – leaving Cassie grieving all over again.

I love the plot of how Tom leaves Cassie a treasure hunt (a Christmas tradition) and how this leads her to places where she can remember and begin to heal/find herself and a new life. Cassie reconnects with old friends and begins to come to terms with the loss of Tom and other people in her life. It’s the story of a mental and physical journey leading to new starts and second chances and it is beautifully told.

Despite having such emotive subject matter and a heart-breaking beginning, the tone of the book does evolve into a more heart-warming, uplifting plot and the Christmas backdrop really accentuates this.

I adored this book and loved how it made me feel all the emotions of the characters.

Author Bio – Emily Stone

Emily Stone lives and works in Chepstow and wrote Always, in December in an old Victorian manor house with an impressive literary heritage. Her debut novel was partly inspired by the death of her mother, when Emily was seven, and wanting to write something that reflected the fact that you carry this grief into adulthood, long after you supposedly move on from the event itself.

One Last Gift is her second novel