Book Review: Things I Wish I Said by Gracie Graham

Rating: ★★★★
Audience: NA Contemporary Romance
Length: 543 pages
Author: Gracie Graham
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: October 29th, 2024
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Lung cancer patient Ryleigh Sinclair wants a boyfriend for the summer.

And my mother wants me to be the one to make her wish come true.

Me. The eternal pessimist. The guy who no longer believes in happy endings after my dad died of pancreatic cancer and my girlfriend dumped me in the same month.

But after weeks of spending time with Ryleigh, she somehow does the impossible. She fills the gaping hole of my father’s absence until I’m the one hoping for a miracle.

I’ve learned my lesson about wishes.

Happily ever afters are a lie.

Yet I’m the one wishing like hell for another outcome for Ryleigh.

I lost my father to cancer; I can’t lose her too.

Thank you to the author for a gifted copy.

THE WAY I BINGED THIS.

For a book over 500 pages I read this at an unhinged rate because the medical anxiety it was giving me made me need to know what was going to happen next. Not to mention, Gracie Graham has such addictive writing. You want to keep turning those pages and fall in love with these characters.

I loved both Ryleigh and Grayson so dang much. There was a lot of trauma and past histories, secrets and turns that brought the unexpected. This is a drama filled book that really has you wondering where it will go next. I loved the banter and relationship between these two and the undeniable chemistry that was present from the first moment they met. Both of the character arcs with filled with a strong impact that hit me square on and I appreciated how the ending all came together.

This is a new adult book (which I loved) but I did struggle with the innuendo throughout. It was crass to me and I didn’t think wholly necessary. The intimate moments were great and worked well with the plot, it was the extra stuff that stood out. And this one does have a LOT [read that again] of language.

Overall audience notes:

New adult romance
Language: very strong
Romance; 2ish brief open door; low explicit + high innuendo
Violence: moderate
Content Warnings: major theme is cancer (treatments, doctor’s appointments, etc.), loss of a parent from cancer, grief and depression, drug use, underage alcohol use, major car accident