The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth by Barbara O'Neal Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: relationship fiction, sad fluff, women's fiction
Pages: 377
Published by Lake Union Publishing on July 29, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Two women overcoming past traumas embark on a healing journey across continents in a novel about friendship, family, and rediscovery by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.
Recently and abruptly divorced Veronica Barrington is anxious for a new direction when she answers a listing for a travel companion. It’s from Mariah Ellsworth, a young woman adjusting to an injury that ended her Olympic career. She’s also grieving her mother, Rachel, a lauded food writer, and Mariah aims to trace the steps of her mother’s final, unfinished project so she can heal and also honor the woman she misses.
Veronica seizes on the opportunity to experience with Mariah the culture, traditions, and intoxicating aromas of Parsi cafés throughout London, Paris, Morocco, and India. Accompanied by a former war photographer who has a wounded history of his own, and with just Rachel’s letters to guide them, the quest is a chance to not only close a chapter in life but also begin a new one.
Following the letters one by one—each a clue to an illuminating mystery—Veronica and Mariah must face the painful and beautiful challenges of freeing themselves from the dark shadows of the past. Together, far from home, they can find the light.
My Review:
The story begins, as so many of this author’s stories do, with two women of different generations at separate but equally tumultuous crossroads in their lives, going on an unexpected journey together that takes them through dark places towards the light of understanding, healing and hope.
Veronica Barrington’s dream of a perfect life was shattered not long after the pandemic ended and things were supposed to be back to “normal”. The husband she had loved, adored and most of all supported, dove deep into his midlife crisis, married a younger woman and started a new family. All the while expecting Veronica to continue to back him up and support him, while still catering to his every whim. Including the occasional booty call.
It’s not a surprise that she breaks – although it is a bit of a surprise that she throws bricks through the windows of the house they used to share when she does. She’s still paying for that breakage in more ways than one.
But Spence-the-ex expects Veronica to give him a pass on spousal support because his new family and old house situation is more expensive than he thought. She needs a job.
Which is where Mariah Ellsworth – and her late mother Rachel – come into the picture. Mariah’s life was shattered into actual, literal pieces when a crazed gunman opened fire in a grocery store, killing Mariah’s mother Rachel and pulverizing the bones in one of Mariah’s legs. Doctors were able to save the leg, but Mariah’s career as an Olympic snowboarder and all the life plans that went with that career are gone.
And the lack of hope and especially purpose are eating Mariah alive. She’s clinging to the idea of taking Rachel’s last and very loose set of notes for her next foodie-and-travel bestseller and finishing the project herself. That project is the knot in Mariah’s rope and she’s clinging to it with everything she has left.
Even though she’s not at all sure what her mother intended OR, and more importantly, how she’ll manage the six-week long globetrotting trip from her home in Denver to London, Paris, Marrakech and finally India on her mother’s quest to explore the Parsi cafe culture and cuisine that spans those four cities.
Mariah needs a companion for her trip – for more than the physical and more than she’s willing to acknowledge. Veronica needs a job. Mariah needs to grieve her mother AND figure out what the focus of the rest of her life is going to be. Veronica needs to get away from home for the holidays as the family traditions she once held so dear and supported with so much time and energy no longer include her. And she, too, needs to figure out the focus for her own life. In her early 50s, Veronica has plenty of life left to live – a life that can’t revolve around her adult children, no matter how much she loves them – and vice versa.
So they set out, together, on the adventure of a lifetime. Or, the adventure of the lifetime they each have yet to figure out.
Escape Rating A-: This turned out to be a single-sitting read for me. Which is exactly what I was expecting as I’ve read several of the author’s books and they all hit a kind of sweet spot that just works. My personal favorites, until now, have been This Place of Wonder and Write My Name Across the Sky and this book has just been added to that list.
The elements of the story are deceptively simple, a young woman and a woman in midlife, each forced to start over, each grieving a past that is irrevocably gone, tied together not by birth family but by necessity, forging a relationship out of that necessity, solving whatever dark knot is holding each of them to the past and eventually winning forward into a brighter present AND future.
In other words, these are stories about the stages of life – even if those lives get to travel through some beautiful and fascinating places along their way. Still, the dilemmas faced by Veronica and Mariah are easy to identify with and that’s part of the charm of the story.
As are the people and places they meet along the way. (And I admit that I got especially caught up in this particular story because the first cafe they visit, Dishoom in London, is a very real place I visited this time last year and had one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in my whole life.)
At the same time, the quest holds the story together, Not just the deep dive into Rachel Ellsworth’s past that made this particular journey so necessary and so poignant, but also the memories of her own past that it sparks in Veronica, and the knowledge that comes to Mariah about the events that shaped the mother she loved.
In the end, this was absolutely the right book at the right time for me – and I didn’t even recognize THAT until I was deeply into the story. I identified hard with Veronica, but Mariah’s situation of broken plans, lost dreams and derailed life expectations hit equally hard – as did her unwillingness to confront her own demons until they nearly overwhelmed her.
If you’re a reader who enjoyed stories of relationships of all types, mixed with a bit of heartbreak and sad fluff but ultimately heartwarming-ness that let you leave the story with a smile on your face, The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth is a gem.
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