What Books Are Similar To Dear Jo: The Story Of Losing Leah?

For seventeen years, Josie Callahan and Grayson Locke have been inseparable. Best friends. Neighbors. Each other's first call, first choice, and safest place. The summer before senior year, after years of hiding their feelings, they finally admit the truth. They fall in love. For one perfect summer, everything feels possible. Then, on the first day of school, Josie hears the one word that changes everything. Leukemia. With only months left to live, she makes an impossible choice. Instead of letting Gray watch her die the same way he watched cancer steal his mother two years earlier, she destroys their relationship herself. She rejects him. Breaks his heart. Pretends she never loved him. She'd rather have him hate her forever than mourn her forever. But some lies are impossible to keep. As cruel rumors spread through Cedar Bluff High, old friendships begin to fracture, jealousy turns dangerous, and Josie's secret becomes harder to hide with every passing day. Cast opposite each other as Romeo and Juliet in the school's final production before graduation, Josie and Gray are forced back into each other's lives, even as she fights to keep him at arm's length. The closer Gray gets to discovering the truth, the more desperate Josie becomes to protect him from it. But love doesn't disappear because someone asks it to. And neither does heartbreak. When time is running out, how do you convince the only person you've ever loved to let you go? Especially when he's still fighting for a forever you'll never live long enough to see.

When her cheating husband accuses Liza of being a cheater, Liza loses it all. All while knowing her husband's infidelity, the only hope she held onto was that he would come back to her leaving his cheating ways. When he demands a divorce, she gives in. Distraught by his accusations, she leaves the very home she had spent numerous nights waiting for him to come home. But an unfortunate accident lands her in the hospital. And the only way he would ever know her truth is the box Liza cherishes so much. In the box lie a series of letters she had written him. Note: This book is about growth and finding oneself.

My billionaire parents, Gerald Voight and Diane Westwood, were afraid my sister, Claire Voight, and I would grow spoiled if we stayed in luxury, so they pulled us out of the city's best prep school and sent us to study in a remote mountain town. On the way there, locals knocked us unconscious and sold us into a brutal trafficking ring. I found a way to contact my parents and begged them to save us, but they said I was lying. "Being sent to the mountains means you were trafficked? You really were raised too soft. You can't handle even a little hardship." "Kids there get into college by fighting their way out. Learn to do the same. Stop depending on us for everything." They blocked my sister's number and mine before I could explain. To survive, my sister and I escaped after three days without food, but when we tried to buy tickets out of the county, the ticket clerk refused us. "Sorry, miss. We've received instructions from the Voight family. You're not allowed to leave the county by any method, unless it's for college." We couldn't get away. The traffickers dragged us back. Later, my sister died from the tortures in a filthy basement. I was luckier. At my last breath, undercover anti-trafficking officers found me. I held my sister's ashes and fled to the farthest city from home. Then our cousin, Jenna Reed, posted a photo from her overseas school. [Uncle Gerald and Aunt Diane are just like my real parents. They give me the best love.] She tagged me on purpose, the way she always did, hoping I'd be provoked into questioning her. This time, I only liked the post and replied: [If you're willing, they can be your real parents. You can be their only daughter.]

My sister, Laura Ward, died the year we were ten, the year we snuck out of school to play. From that day forward, my mother’s grief turned into a burning hatred for me, convinced that I was the reason my sister was gone. She treated me like a servant, like an unwanted burden, and filled the void by adopting a perfect, obedient daughter to replace my sister. She took everything from me without a second thought — my rights, my freedom, my very existence — and even demanded that I give up a kidney for her precious adopted girl. Alright, Mother, if you want a life, I’ll give you mine! But it was only when my body lay cold, my breath long gone, that she finally turned and looked at me.

Seven years of marriage. Seven years of building a quiet, loving life with my husband, Harry, centered around our sweet son, Leo. But our fragile world shattered the moment her shadow fell across our doorstep—Harry's captivating first love, Claire, and her son, Jake. She and her son forced Leo to eat an entire sugary cake on his birthday, causing his blood sugar to rise dangerously. I tried to stop them, but the real betrayal came from my husband, who emotionally tortured our son into eating the last sugary bomb, leading him to death. I hadn't recovered from the trauma of watching my son die before my eyes when my husband blew away Leo's ashes before my eyes, the only remains of my son. That was when I decided, not only to divorce him, but to make him pay for his each and every sin.

Mara Voss, 28, had everything mapped out: a brilliant career in Manhattan, a boyfriend on the verge of proposing, and a best friend who grounded her. In a single night, all three pillars of her life collapse at once — and at the hands of each other. Betrayed by the people she loved most, Mara must rebuild herself in the very city that witnessed her fall, without running, without giving up. And then Caleb Shaw appears — the wrong man at exactly the right moment.