Review: "Winter Longing"

Winter Longing

by Tricia Mills

August 19th 2010

256 pages

From Goodreads: A plane crash in Alaska takes Winter’s first love away forever . . .

When Winter's boyfriend is killed in a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, she's robbed of the future she'd only just allowed herself to believe might be hers. Winter and Spencer had been destined for one another. And after his death, Spencer's presence continues to haunt her.

But when her next-door neighbor becomes an unlikely friend, Winter begins to accept all that she can't change. Can she open herself to a new future . . . and a possible new love?

My Thoughts: I was hooked from the beginning, I couldn't put it down, and I finished the book in one sitting! I can't believe that this story was able to make me cry from the very beginning, and kept me teary eyed while reading almost the whole thing! Books don't usually have this effect on me, and most books definitely can't make me cry before I even know the characters I am crying for! But I guess "Winter Longing" is different.

Winter and Spencer have been best friends for a very long time! She has always had feelings for him that go beyond their friendship, and eventually she finds out that he does too, but they aren't a couple for long before Winter loses the love of her life in a tragic accident. This all pretty much happens in the first chapter.

We don't even get the chance to meet Spencer in the present, but instead each chapter starts out with short memories of Spencer and Winter, starting from middle school, and we get a nice little insight of their growing relationship while at the same time mourning him.

I felt a strong emotional attachment to Winter. I felt her pain, I felt her happiness, and then I felt her guilt for having a happy moment or two. The story really isn't about death, it's about living. It's about overcoming the feeling that your world has come to an end, and realizing that life goes on, and that you need to accept the things you can not change, and try to find happiness for yourself in this life.

Overall it was a heartbreaking story. Be sure to have a box of tissues by your side when you start reading, because you are probably going to need them!