Whispers Between Hearts by KD

A touching collection of poetry how love can bloom and grow especially the poem, Petals Of You, a beautiful poem describing love through growth, flowers, plants, seasons. Suagr & Soul, was a great poem, a literal sweet poem about a love and how it feels. If Time Had A Face, was a beautifully written piece about how time with your love seems to fly by quickly and you lose track of it so easily when together. It was a short collection but still so beautifully flowing and written it doesn't make it any less deep feeling.

The Woman Who Waited By The Copier by Maria T. Anderson

The final part of this series shows again through letters, lingering silence and longing including in the scents and sounds of life that comfort and ground you too. Detailing the importance of writing down your feelings to feel, appreciate and accept your deep devotion, is still important to help yourself process and accept your feelings to move on and life with easier. This series is a great reflective one if you've ever been through an unrequited crush.

Unread By Mr H by Maria T. Anderson

The book details all the feelings an unrequited crush or limerence can leave you dealing with, especially if the one you desire is already married as this book focuses on. Encouraging us to reflect on actions, unspoken words, memories shared and objects related to the one you long or desire to be closer to and how it draws on bittersweet feelings to us, maybe, even memories, even if just in work together, to reflect on and why we feel them, how the longing can feel like grieving someone who hasn't even passed away at times too. It was a great book showing the impact of a workplace, unattainable crush and how it can literally leave you feeling, crushed.

To The Man Behind The Office Door by Maria T. Anderson

This is the first book of a trio about longing or desiring to be close to someone you feel a pull or longing towards, in the case of this book, written in a series of unsent letters from a colleague about her boss. At the end of each chaper the author, Maria, asks us to reflect on the way we feel and guides us with questions to ask ourselves and answer honestly, privately, to ourselves about our own feelings if in a similar situation or just to reflect on deeper relating to the story laid out. It was a great start to this series and I like the layout of the unsent letters and reflective points at the end of each to think of too.

The Day Without You Book 3 by Maria T. Anderson

This next book in the series deals with the immediate aftermath of losing her new husband from the previous book and their journey to marriage from the first so do read those two before this one for sure to continue the story! Grief wants a place to sit with you, it's in the mundade everyday places and objects surrounding you in and around the house you shared, Maria really captures how grief exists after loss in items and moments, everyday life can feel a real challenge to adapt to and grief can consume you until you can live with it. This series is a great prose poetry story of how you can fall in love and live with the challenge grief and loss presents too.

When Grief Becomes Light Bride In Black Book 9 by Maria T. Anderson

This final book of the series captures how over months and years passing by, life can resume in a new altered way to a normal rhythm again, remembering fondly memories and honouring. Chaoter 26, about lighting remembrance candles in a church, a simple warm act of remembering and honouring the love and light that person brought, was a deeply moving part I can relate to, the years can go by but still, I light a candle in memory and probably always will in tribute. It was a wonderful conclusion to a deeply moving relatable series of how grief can affect you but how hope can still exist as time passes too.

The Silence That Became Home Bride In Black Book 8 by Maria T. Anderson

This series continues in showing the dark and light following grief and the series continues in this book showing how accepting grief can mean enjoying parts of life around you again even just tentatively, a little at a time, from simple joy like enjoying the seasons changing embracing little natural changes. Chapter 7, The Sentence She Didn't Cut Short, I really felt deeply after losing my friend I let read my own writing too and be the one I'd go to first to give me love and critique on each piece. This book also shows how finding new people, knowing the you now after loss, can be healing in itself holding no history of your life like a blank canvas. This collection I really felt shows how grief becomes a quieter companion and softens slightly more into a silent invisible more friendlier ghost of remembrance to exist alongside and this book captured that perfectly to me.

The Light That Stayed Behind Book 7 by Maria T. Anderson

Another book in this series, displaying how in moving on, coping with grief, it exists in little things you encounter along the way that no longer sting as much but offer gentle reassurance at what you know once existed in your life as a sort of acknowledgement from life. Living alongside memories more easily as time goes on as friendly reminders and embracing the good you can remember from them despite it feeling bittersweet, this series continues to capture how living with grief changes over the time after loss.

The Calm That isn't Calm Bride In Black Book 6 by Maria T. Anderson

This next book of the series really shows how grief can exist when life has gone seemingly back to the new now normal life you exist in. How little everyday mundane calm things can feel huge to tackle but slowly over time feel easier to deal with as time goes by and the grief feels less sharp and raw to cope with. Perfectly capturing how the grief you feel shifts as time continues to pass you by but you are barely living just existing, even if just within your own home.

The Smile With Tears Behind It Bride In Black Book 5 by Maria T. Anderson

I've been really enjoying this series and now a few books into it, the story of life after grief begins to settle into a new normal happens and reflections occur, bittersweet still in every day moments of life. How home is now just a house love echoes in items, ghosts of memory and words written are left behind from the loved one passed on. Also touching on how smiling is hard to feel real and not like a ghost, gaps in photo's where they should be beside you, clothing you wear and pieces they never got to pass opinion on you choose and wear sometimes altering your future self to deflect how you feel after the loss, something I relate to as well. Utterly relatable and heartbreaking at the same time in real life capturing how grief can effect you as time goes on and life continues around you it feels.