And yeah, I’m speaking from experience with crushing social anxiety. With social anxiety, you live with misery as your closest companion, and you are perversely content because you know how safe being alone feels, and how tiring it is to budget the energy needed for being in unknown places with unknown (and sometimes known) people. It’s a tricksome conundrum when you think you want to get better, but you hold tight to your sickness, so you don’t have to change.

Shutting herself off from the world, she is in a war against herself. Luca is struggling to survive, crushing social anxiety as a result of PTSD. I don’t like clowns.” Dirty Letters by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward I have a fear of crowds and confined places.” She set the kettle down on the stove and lit the burner. No one had ever asked me such a direct question about my mental health. I can take Penelope’s punches while Vi holds my hand. I love the stories-but I’m wrung out and exhausted by loving characters like Sevin, Jake, and Channing, which is why I love when she and Vi Keeland write together. But I don’t find it emotionally comfortable to get though. She’s excellent at delicately, but honestly, depicting the mental health and mental illness challenges her characters must face. I won’t lie, though I always feel emotionally exhausted on the last page because this woman writes trauma earnestly. I loved both of these novels and most of the other Ward books I have read since. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.I think the first Penelope Ward book I read was Stepbrother Dearest-No, it was Jake Undone. People have done crazier things for love.īut what I found could change everything. But I wanted more- more Griff, in the flesh-so I took a big chance and went looking for him. He asked that I trust him and said it was for the best. So it only made sense that we would take our relationship to the next level and see each other in person.

Our letters quickly went from fun to flirty to downright dirty, revealing our wildest fantasies. Only now we were adults, and that connection had grown to a spark. Griffin forgave me, and somehow we were able to rekindle our childhood connection. I had no choice but to finally come clean as to why I stopped writing. A scathing one-one with eight years of pent-up anger. Then, out of the blue, a new letter arrived.

Over the years, through hundreds of letters, we became best friends, sharing our deepest, darkest secrets and forming a connection I never thought could break. Griffin Quinn was my childhood pen pal, the British boy who couldn’t have been more different from me. I’d never forgotten him-a man I’d yet to meet. An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller.įrom New York Times bestselling authors Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward comes an unexpected love story that started with a boy and girl and heats up when the man and woman reconnect.

Dirty letters by vi keeland