“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal and love leaves a memory no one can steal”

Book Name: The Last Wish of Sasha Cade

Author: Cheyanne Young

Genre: Contemporary Young Adult

Ratings: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Imagine you and your best friend, sitting on your bed, discussing a movie you just saw. Imagine sitting with your best friend in the cafeteria and complaining about a teacher. Now imagine finding out that your best friend has cancer. Imagine losing said best friend to cancer.

Raquel Clearwater is an average teenager who, for all her life, has lived in the shadow of her best friend Sasha Cade. She wasn’t unhappy. She was perfectly happy with this system. Until the day Raquel wasn’t a shadow anymore. The day her best friend, Sasha died. Although, Rocki knew this day would come, it still hurt like a ton of bricks. No one could have prepared her for this, not even Sasha.

The book gives you a roller coaster of emotions in the first few chapters itself. With the expectant death of Sasha, Raquel’s emotional breakdown and experiencing the raw and vulnerable narration of the situation. It’s not easy to function once a loved one has passed away and Young has given great thought in portraying those feelings. Everyone around Raquel gives her enough space to breathe and cope with the loss of Sasha instead of expecting her to act or feel in a certain way. It shows a great deal of how every person deals with grief in their own way.

But that’s not all, Sasha prior to her unfortunate demise, has planned a bucket list for Raquel and a mystery boy named Elijah. Cue entry of a handsome male, with a great build, rugged look, a motor cycle and piercing blue eyes. *drool* The pre-planned bucket list entails Raquel and Elijah to go on little adventures to give them some closure.

Not only, is Elijah super handsome, but also openly shares his feelings with Raquel. I guess it’s a Peter Kavinsky thing. Gives a fresh look on the whole ‘bad-boys-are-mean’ narrative. Bad boys have feelings. Boys/Men have feelings. Period. Raquel starts to fall for Elijah and learns of Sasha’s predictions of her feelings as well. #bestfriendbondforever

Raquel, doing right by Sasha, follows every instruction on the list, whilst also breaking a few major ones, tries to bring about changes in the lives of those who matter to Sasha. In doing so, she herself finds her peace and eventually goes on to becoming everything Sasha always wanted her to be.

A tear jerking book about friendships, forbidden romance, new relationships and moving on. Young has done an exceptional job at portraying life choices and how class differences shape who we are and who we grow up to be.

Publisher: Kids Can Press

Publication Date: October 2, 2018

Book Acquired: ARC, Netgalley

Get your hands on this book when it releases on 2nd October 2018! Keep reading till then. 

All the Love, R.