OUR FAVORITE THINGS: If You Find This Letter

[Welcome to Our Favorite Things, a series featuring—you guessed it!—our favorite things. From books to brands to tunes to film, these are all things we at Windrose want to shout from the rooftops about.]

“I have a book you should read.”

That's what my roommate told me one Sunday evening as I expressed to her for the millionth time my ongoing discontent with life.

I began Hannah Brencher's If You Find This Letter the following morning before work, coffee in hand, my feet propped up on the chair in front of me on my balcony.

Two pages in I started crying.

I wept my way through the entire book. But my tears weren't of the "wow that was incredibly sad" type, but instead of the "wow that was incredibly beautiful" kind.

The memoir follows Hannah's first year after college (HOW RELEVANT!) as she completes a year of service at the United Nations in New York. During those months of hardship and less-than-comfortable personal growth, she comes up with the idea to start leaving love letters to strangers all over the city.

This idea of sprinkling encouraging words all over New York eventually grew into More Love Letters, a movement devoted to spreading love - simple, unabashed love through handwritten letters to those who need them.

I'm a sucker for words. And handwritten letters. So of course I'm a sucker for everything about this story and the movement it created.

And Hannah's quality of writing? It's at the I-only-wish-I-could-write-like-her level.

Seriously, this is one of those books that will leave you thinking lots of thoughts and asking those Big Questions about life, which - in my opinion - is the best kind of book.

So, guys, I have a book you should read.

This post contains affiliate links from Amazon. This means that when you purchase a book through the links, That First Year receives a li'l bit of cash money in return. You get an amazing book and we take a step closer to reaching our goal of paying contributors. Wins all around!

---