by Amber (link)
Genre slash, drama, romance
Pairings Taylor/OMC, Taylor/Scott Moffatt, Zac/Dave Moffatt
Length 31 chapters and epilogue
Status Completed (sequel to Devil Angel)
Who hasn’t read and loved Devil Angel? Anyone? Anyone at all? For all that it was a flawed story, it was also a loved story that inspired tons of lost chapters and sequels. One of the most recent of those is Letting Go Is The Hardest Part, and in my opinion it’s the one that is most in keeping with the spirit of Aspen’s writing.
It’s clear that Amber studied Aspen’s writing closely in order to be able to emulate it closely, but it feels more like a smooth continuation than an imitation. Gradually, over the years she took to write the story, her own voice has come out. Likewise, her writing improves from a technical standpoint as the story goes on, and she has at least gone back to edit some of the earlier chapters to bring them more in line with the later ones. Still, the problems are ones that would only bother a pedant like me, and overall the writing retains the feel of Aspen’s while also being more mature.
Amber aged her characters up well, imagining a world for them that almost mirrors the real one but makes sense given their history in Devil Angel. A few flashbacks that reveal what might have happened off screen (or after Aspen stopped writing) fill in the gaps between that story and this. Although we’ll never know what Aspen intended, Amber has created a stalker character that is definitely chilling. The idea of a random obsessed stalker isn’t as creative as many of the theories people had for Devil Angel, but it is the most logical conclusion, and one that still leaves the potential for the ending of Letting Go Is The Hardest Part to be surprising… and it is.
Review by Bethany (website)