Truly one of the best books I've read this year. Very few books can balance heart wrenching grief as well as a mystery; a suspenseful thriller if you will.
Coen Caraway and Elias Santos are engaged to be married in a beautiful resort in Mexico. Just days before the wedding, with guests already en route, the plane Elias is co-piloting crashes into the ocean. The last words heard on the 'black box' leave more questions than answers and Coen must now plan a memorial instead of a wedding.
He tells friends and family that if they don’t believe in Elias’s innocence to not bother coming to the memorial service. He is hanging on every bit of news of the crash he can find. Truth is slow to materialize. He is having difficulty reaching Elias’s family to tell them the tragic news. He is also finding it nearly impossible to believe Elias is innocent while simultaneously doing his best to not deal with his own grief. A tale of longing, of regret, of things not quite as they seem, of the person you are and the person you pretend to be.
Coen learns that he may never have truly known the man he loved and coming to terms with his loss is almost more than he can bear.
Heartbreaking, raw, and honest. After Elias is a must read.