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Content notes (for the author’s note and the rest of the book): mental illness, suicide
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Back when my mom was healthy, I remember she looked forward to turning fifty. She said the whole year was going to be a celebration.
Alas, that’s not what happened.
When I was twenty-five and my mother was fifty, I lost her to suicide.
My mother had an episode of severe depression about once every ten years. I, too, was no stranger to depression, and not just because I’d seen her struggle with it. I believe I first became depressed when I was fifteen, and I have never not struggled with mental illness as an adult.
The feeling of being suicidal was something I understood...intimately. And I do think the way I processed that loss had a lot to do with my own experience with depression.
I have long wanted to write a heroine with a similar experience to me, who’d also lost a parent to suicide and dealt with treatment-resistant depression herself. It was part of Rose’s story from the time I planned out the Cider Bar Sisters series early in 2020, but I didn’t feel ready to write it yet, so I decided hers would be the last book. By the time I began writing the book, late in 2021, I was as ready as I could be.
I don’t think this book is too depressing, and I assure you it has a happy ending, but it didn’t feel right to call it a rom-com, so this book is categorized a little differently from the other books in the series. Rose lost her mother about ten years before the start of the book, and it’s not described in graphic detail, but it’s still part of her story.
Rose has compassion for her mother’s experiences with depression, but their relationship was complicated by the fact that her mother didn’t really “believe” in mental illness even though she was clearly suffering from it herself. When Rose started having problems as a teenager, her mother wasn’t supportive, although she was supportive in other areas of Rose’s life.
My own relationship with my mother wasn’t exactly like Rose’s relationship with her mom, but there were some similarities.
I started writing in 2010, several months before my mother’s death. The last time I saw her, one of the things I told her was that I’d started writing a novel, and she was happy for me because she knew it was something I’d always wanted to do. That novel never saw the light of day, but I’ve now written many, many other books.
I know Rose and Cal’s story might not be for everyone, and I totally understand if you decide not to continue. If you do keep reading, I hope you enjoy the final Cider Bar Sisters book.
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Jackie Lau