4.25 Stars June + Jesse They're 17 years old and were both pretty much almost at the end of their young lives - cancer. But now there's a last chance - a new drug is being tested and off we go to this beautiful Texan Ranch Hospital. June has always dreamed of being a writer later. A later that might not come. So she's constantly writing to get all the words out. The love story that she might never have herself. Jesse was on his way to be a famous football QB. And he still plans on that dream to become a reality. We only have to win against that effing disease first. And fall in love with each other... ════════════════ Well. That was some cry-fest! Jeez Tillie! You start crying basically in the first seconds of reading and pretty much don't stop until the end and maybe even long after. Why am I reading these kinds of books? Why? I loved this. And I hated it so much! June and Jesse are so adorable and it's all so heartbreaking. The other characters are amazing too - the parents and friends and the medical people. Great cast - would make a great movie with that beautiful place and the horses ... but you wouldn't be able to see anything due to all the eye wetness. I'm not really - or at all - a fan of my book people being sick. And this book is so very full of all of that. I don't like that. I understand that Tillie uses writing things like that as therapy to deal with losses in her own life. But why do we have to go through this too? It's our own fault, because we will always read these kinds of books. And it hurts so much even though it doesn't touch our private lives! Why do we still not have any real cure for children's cancer - or any kind of cancer? Gah - I hate this so much! This was a beautiful book but I hated it. ► WRITE ME FOR YOU was another super emotional Tillie Cole YA love story. Full of heartbreaking moments, of friends and family, hope and grief and all those horrible and beautiful things. I really enjoyed (hated) reading it and I would so watch the movie!

4.5⭐️ I loved A Thousand Boy Kisses, so I was keen to read this book, another moving YA romance. Our two love interests are June and Jesse seventeen they are an innovative centre for trial treatment for cancer, as traditional treatments haven’t worked. The hospital setting is amazing, it’s a rural ranch, they only take a small group at a time, just 8 patients. The group of 4 in their treatment group become firm friends, and romance quickly blossoms between June and Jesse. Jesse is a football player, June an aspiring writer. Yes it’s sad, but there’s so much hope, and joy at our couple finding their first love, and soulmate. It’s sentimental, it’s beautiful, it had me in tears. It’s interesting using a book within a book scenario, it’s interesting how things develop. Not sure that I totally loved that aspect, but it’s different. I loved the book, do read it, but have the tissues to hand.

3.75 / 5 This is a new contemporary heartbreaking romantic novel by Tillie Cole - my first read in her collection. This was my chosen book for theme - YA - in the Lonely Hearts book Club. I’m aware that this is a new style YA which is different to her other books in which the plots incorporate darker themes but this book had me welling up and i now have splashes of tears in the last 10 pages of my book. This was set with dual POV of the FMC, June, a quiet reserved teenage girl who is battling Leukaemia, who dreams of finding love like her parents and wishes to be a writer. We see her last hope for treatment in a clinical trial held in a hospital set on a ranch. She meets our MMC, Jesse, another patient in the trial, who is struggling with loneliness, duty and realisation of his dreams for the future. There is instant attraction and longing upon their meet cute - this progressed throughout until the end. I wish as readers, we may have had a bit more depth to their attraction to one another (i’m not a huge insta-love reader in general), and i’m a huge fan of letting love blossom no matter the time held, but I just needed more of June & Jesse. However I suppose thats the point in this plot - that time is ultimately finite. The novel was beautifully done with such sensitive and heartbreaking topics, and how our characters navigated their uncertainty about life and death, whilst trying to maintain their adolescence and dealing with aspects of adulthood. Overall: Stars 3.75 Peppers 0 Tropes: Instant love, timeless/parallel love, close proximity, YA romantic emotional drama, triggers (cancer diagnosis, bereavement, grief and loss).