I’ve had plenty of time to think of a way to explain how deeply I love this book, and yet I still sit here with nothing to offer but the aching in my chest and the inarguable insistence that you read it.

Tarah creates character after character that cut deep and resonate - I saw so much of myself in Sage and the way she loves others, I still consider Funny Feelings one of my all-time favorites, you’ve seen my Co-Op reno review. But Ellis and Wren? Toothpick comes out clean, I am done.

I’ve been foaming at the mouth since SHE’S STILL A BYRD rung all my bones like a tuning fork and not a single moment of this disappointed. The tender, aching, interwoven love that these two feel for each other and the force with which they’re resisting it had me screaming it into my pillow and absolutely tearing up Tarah’s DMs into the wee hours of the morning. It’s painful and funny and sharp and gorgeous, and also a little filthy because it’s Tarah, obvi.

We get to see Ellis navigate his now-adult son and realize that everyone in his life has been raised (by him) to self-sufficiency. We get to see Wren discover that she knows herself and that time has dimmed nothing about her. And she is still a Byrd - it’s a testament to the surety of their love for each other (in spite of their distance) that Wren has never been anything less than family to all of the Byrd siblings. I want to consume this book; is that weird?

There’s never been love lost between these two; it’s always been there, packed and zipped away in a desperate show of self-preservation but also a deep need to save the other. They needed to figure out how to find themselves before they could find their ways back to each other. They only got lost because they forgot to keep holding each other’s hands. And seeing them hesitantly and then full-heartedly reach for each other again was nothing short of beautiful.

I am holding my heart in my hands and Tarah is poking it with a stick.