Left of Forever by Tarah DeWitt

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: May 20, 2025

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Thank you to Tarah DeWitt and SMP for sending me an ARC. Tarah, thank you especially for being you.

TROPES: childhood friends to lovers to exes; second chance; single parents; road trip; only one bed; epistolary; baker x firefighter; small town

TW: mentions of ectopic pregnancy; infertility; wildfires; animals in danger (no animals die)

Second Chance is probably (not probably, definitely, now that I look back at my favorite reads) my favorite trope. Don’t ask me why, I’m not in the mood to unpack that.

me reading literally any Tarah DeWitt book, but especially this one.

The point is that it’s my favorite, and if you have had any conversation with me or near me in the last year, you know that Tarah DeWitt is my favorite author. I have pestered that poor woman so much over how much I love her brain that she somehow also became my friend, and I’m so grateful for her <3

I find it is most difficult to write anything about my most favorite things because I have so many feelings it’s hard to get them down all at once. Left of Forever is one of those favorite things. I want everything that I write and make for it is as perfect and incredible as the book itself is, and I don’t think anything will ever measure up.

I fell in love with Savor It last year by chance. I was up until 3 AM sobbing over Fisher telling Sage it was a privilege to fall in love with her, and I have not shut up about Spunes since.

There is something magical in this little Oregon town. Something that makes you never want to leave. And I don’t think, mentally, I ever will.

One of the standout moments in Savor It, if you haven’t read it (which you should) is a town hall meeting in which Wren is called by her maiden name and Ellis (Sage’s big brother and the broodiest, sexiest mustachioed fireman ever) makes sure the entire room of people know: She’s still a Byrd.

I have never seen one single line birth so many fans.

Even as side characters, Ellis and Wren’s chemistry ate up the page. And we waited very eagerly for them to get their own book.

Left of Forever is this book.

When we saw Wren and Ellis back in Savor It, their unresolved love story was a living, breathing thing. In that town hall, it was a very big, very obvious elephant that no one was ready to touch. But if you read and loved Savor It as much as I did, if you fell in love with Spunes and her lovely little lives as quick as I did—Wren and Ellis’s story was one that you were hungry for. It’s never been a question of IF these two were going to get their second chance, but when. There have never been two people as inevitable.

Tarah carved her heart out of her chest and put it on paper when she wrote this. There are moments when you read a book and you can almost hear the author’s heartbeat. She’s always written and developed perfectly imperfect characters desperately reaching for their happy ever afters, but there is something different about Left of Forever. It is not really this journey of finding their way back to each other, because they’ve always been there, within arms reach, even when they were apart. Instead, it’s an unraveling. A reckoning of all the things left unsaid that drove them apart. That there is such a thing as overcautious, overcaring, overloving. That you can find your greatest love at the very start of your life but it doesn’t mean you can keep it if you aren’t willing to work for it. Time is such a cruel thing in that it runs out but it also settles deep. It’s easy to get trapped in routines, to get so comfortable that you don’t realize how deep you’ve sunk in the sand until you can’t move.

The biggest question with Second Chance is why now?

Especially for divorced couples. What is there now that couldn’t be solved five years ago when you were together and in peril? For Wren and Ellis, it was the need for a paradigm shift. These two met when they were five years old. They became parents before they finished high school. They grew up together, took shape around each other, and in the determination to give their son the best life they could, they focused there. Their life was constantly adapting to the next big thing that happened to them. And yes, maybe it took five years and a fateful pen-pal situation for these two to start over and open up to each other. Back to basics. The classic leaving-the-comfort-bubble thing.

What Tarah manages to do with a couple letters, a road trip, and an unfortunate pepper situation is create the most perfect second-chance romance there could ever be. No, I’m not being dramatic. It was easy to see these were never stopped being in love, and it’s a very difficult task to convince us that the reason they separated was valid enough and that the reason they get back together is stronger than that. She gives us yearning and then turns it to 1000. Gives us emotional growth, open communication (little by little), humor, sexual tension, and some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.

TL:DR my official review (since most sites have word limits but this one doesn’t because it’s controlled by me so I can make it a whole Wrellis fanpage if I really wanted to) is this:

A perfect second-chance romance between childhood sweethearts that lost themselves and each other and have been flying in circles around each other for years. Ellis and Wren have been divorced for five years and have done an exceptional job raising their son, Sam, but in all their efforts to be the world's most well-adjusted co-parents, they never got around to resolving their feelings towards each other. When Sam goes to college, however, Ellis sees an opening. And on the drive up from California with his ex-wife in his passenger seat, he's determined to get it right.

Tarah Dewitt is a master of balancing gut-wrenching emotion with laugh-out-loud humor, all spiced up with hot, sexy tension. Her characters are real, they are adored, you cannot help but cheer them on from page one.

I am a sucker for second chances, but this one is the reigning champion. Wren and Ellis will be with me always, two little birds perched on every power line from here to eternity.

Make sure to pre-order your copy of LOF NOW! Seriously, do it. Tarah is doing a bunch of cool pre-order incentives, going on tour, and the cover & audiobook for this thing are so incredible, you owe it to yourself to get them. Immediately.

Looking for a bookclub?

Trope Bookclub is discussing Left of Forever in June 2025! If you’re local to Tampa or South Florida, swing by to hear me gush about Tarah in person. Learn more and check out the other bookclubs I host!