Review: Just tell her already!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2013
2.5 StarsYou can read this and other reviews at [...]Zack Benson has been in love with Elena Rodriguez for… um… forever? He just hasn’t ever gotten up the balls to tell her and when he FINALLY decides to do it, she’s stepping onto a plan headed for Afghanistan.  After graduating medical school, Lena joined the Army, and was on her way to her first deployment.  I guess what they say is true, timing is everything.  Zack gets this bright idea.  He’ll send her one letter for each month of her tour.  By the time Lena comes home she’s head-over-heels for her secret admirer.  Of course Zack didn’t sign the letters… *eye roll* He just sent them off and figured he’d deal with the aftermath when she came home.  He asked her to meet him at a gazebo on Christmas morning.  Now Lena has to decide if holding on to “letter boy” is worth it when Zack obviously has feelings for her and is standing right in front of her."No more reliving the past. She wanted an adult relationship of mutual trust, commitment, and affection, in the present day. She wanted to move beyond the past. She had fallen in love with the man in those letters. The man who had spoken to her of his dreams and desires – his desire for her."Silly girl.  How could she not see that Zack and the letter writer are the same person? At first it’s like she doesn’t even contemplate it.  She just assumes he only thinks of her as a friend/sister and writes him off completely.  There were a few times when my heart literally hurt for the poor guy.  Of course, he could have just admitted to writing the letters sooner and saved himself a whole lot of worry/heartache. I understand fearing rejection, but at some point Lena would find out anyway, might as well just speed up the process.  Of course, if he did that it would have turned this novella into a very short story."He wanted to hear her whisper his name and say that she loved him. But she’d fallen in love with the letter guy, who was only a part of him. The silly romantic part …he should have taken more time to swear or tell a dirty joke or two.What if she didn’t love the rest of him?"Eventually Lana finds out that Zack is her secret admirer only to have the unthinkable happen. Slightly depressing… I promise you that the story ends in a HEA.  Although it’s upsetting, it’s not heart shattering.There isn’t much to say about this novella.  It’s basically a story of unrequited love – only it’s not all at the same time. Lena and Zack have both had feelings for one another. Zack has just finally decided enough is enough and stepped up to the plate… slowly, and with extreme caution, but that’s more than I can say for Lena.  I had a hard time connecting with her character.  I was on board with her being a hard working military woman – very independent; both physically and emotionally stronger than her family members think.  But beyond that, I felt nothing for her.  And while Zack was a very sweet man, that’s ALL he was to me.  I couldn’t get past the fact that he wouldn’t just tell her.  TELL HER ALREADY!This is a sweet, fast, easy holiday read. Something to pick up in between your wrapping or on a cold night as you curl up with a warm blanket in front of the fire.  If my ARC didn’t have a glitch where every “fl” or ‘fi” combination was absent from words, I probably would have enjoyed it even more.  Using context clues to figure out the correct word in the sentence got old after a while.  I’m sure that will be a non-issue when it comes to your copy, but I just needed to vent. It made me a little crazier than I already am. :) <i>Letters from Home</i> was my first run in with Bethanne Strasser, and while I wasn’t blown away, I wouldn’t count her out just yet.