What if the greatest love of your life was never yours to keep?

Lucía was never supposed to fall for Erin.

But one glance turned into a spark. A spark into a tether. And what followed unraveled everything she thought she understood—about love, loyalty, and the quiet ache of wanting someone you were never allowed to have.

Told through a series of haunting letters and poetic vignettes, If You Are Reading This: Letters from the Edge of Almost is a profoundly intimate portrait of longing, grief, restraint, and the quiet resilience it takes to survive a love that the world tells you shouldn’t exist.

Lucía and Erin are both married. Both respected. Both bound by lives they chose—and lives that chose them. But behind closed doors, their connection deepens into something neither of them can deny and both of them fear. To the outside world, they’re just friends. Inside these pages, they’re everything unspoken.

This isn’t a conventional love story—it’s a survival story written in the margins of what could have been. It’s about what we sacrifice to keep others safe. About the cost of invisibility. And about the kind of love that doesn’t scream, but lingers—aching and alive—in the spaces between duty and desire.

Author Valentina Saenz weaves memory, fiction, and emotional truth into a heart-wrenching debut that reads like a whisper into your soul. With lyrical prose and raw honesty, this book captures the ache of almost, the fear of being seen, and the liberation that comes from writing the words you were never brave enough to say aloud.

Perfect for readers who loved:

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The poetic honesty of Ocean Vuong

The emotional resonance of Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things