This book... HEART WRENCHING! I admit, I was a little worried when I started this book, because not only is it written by a friend of mine (pressure to love it!) but it also tackled the issues of relationships before, during, and after deployment. I have lived through 2 awful deployments (they are ALL awful) and I worried that this book either would make them seem way too easy to live through, or way too dramatic. Well, Vanessa hit it on the head. The emotions she wrote in such a way that they felt VERY real. Not overly dramatized or glossed over! I felt all the emotions just as I had when deployment, worry, not knowing... when it was all my reality. The story was so good, so real. Not only did it deal with the military aspect of the relationship, but it dealt with the relationship itself. Everyone goes into relationships with baggage, and seeing those relationships in the book was so authentic. I am SO glad that I finally read this book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how it REALLY is to live through this type of life.