47 pages • 1 hour read
Emma GreyThe Last Love Note: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
Four years ago, Kate struggles to nurse Charlie, who is one and a miniature of his dad. Cam is packing for a medieval conference in Rome. Kate wants to go back to work and has an interview with a fundraising department at the university. Cam reminisces about how he passed her a love note during a lecture in their second year at university, 16 years ago.
Grace takes Kate to the gym and confides that her doctor has diagnosed her with having poor eggs, making Kate feel guilty for being an IVF success story. Grace says Cam is delicious, but Kate notes he forgot they’ve been together for 17 years. On the treadmill, Kate talks about her upcoming interview and how she tends to oversell herself. She falls off her treadmill, and the man next to her catches her. Kate thinks he is giving off McDreamy vibes and then realizes her breasts are leaking milk. The man on the treadmill gives her a rugby shirt to cover herself.
Chapter 9 Summary
Kate arrives for her interview and reminds herself that fundraising is a kind of storytelling, which she likes. She recalls having sex with Cam after the gym incident. At her interview, Kate recognizes the man from the gym, who introduces himself as Hugh Lancaster. Kate wants to throw up and wonders if she’s pregnant. After being stunned for a moment by this realization, she rallies and speaks well at the interview. Then she leaves to throw up for real.
Chapter 10 Summary
Kate returns home to find that Cam forgot to put Charlie down for his nap. She confesses she might be pregnant, and Cam is supportive. Kate adores how Charlie’s face lights up for her. The pregnancy test is positive, and she wonders how they are going to do this. Cam leaves her a note that reads “We’ve got this, Red.”
Chapter 11 Summary
At her first day in the office, Kate is having morning sickness. A co-worker, Sophie, tells her she can confide in Hugh, saying, “Everyone here would walk over hot coals for that guy” (99). Kate meets with Hugh and confides that she is pregnant. He confirms that they still want her for the job and will arrange to make her schedule flexible. Kate wonders how such a wonderful man is single and thinks of Grace.
Chapter 12 Summary
An ultrasound appointment shows that the baby is healthy, but Cam doesn’t seem to be paying attention. As they leave the hospital, Cam drives through a red light and they are hit by another car. Kate realizes he is not okay.
At the hospital, Kate reflects on how Cam hasn’t seemed himself and has become forgetful. He has trouble answering questions. Kate is cleared, but Cam is taken for tests. Kate calls Hugh to tell him what happened, and he says he’ll come to the hospital. Kate hopes “he’ll stride in and fix this too. Wave a magic wand and make it all go away. Or at least open up a manageable path through it, with the happily-ever-after ending Cam and I are supposed to get” (113).
Chapter 13 Summary
Hugh takes Kate to get something to eat while Cam is getting scans. To take her mind off her fear, Kate probes for information about Hugh’s relationship status. He says he is single and wants a woman who would be all in, the two of them against the world, who is funny and unpretentious, caring and generous. Kate thinks Grace is all of those things. Then, the doctor calls.
Chapter 14 Summary
The doctor talks with Cam and Kate and runs some memory tests that Cam fails, upsetting them both. They decide to keep Cam overnight in the neurological ward.
Afterward, Kate finds Hugh waiting to give her a ride home. She is grateful that he is so reliable and steady, and she worries what’s going to happen to her and Charlie if something is wrong with Cam. She imagines Grace and Hugh getting together.
Chapter 15 Summary
Kate visits Cam in the hospital and thinks of them as Cam & Kate. “In each other’s arms,” she thinks, “nothing can touch us. We’re safe. It doesn’t matter if my identity is one part struggling new mum, one part frustrated writer with fundraising talents, and eight parts in love with Cam Whittaker” (130). Cam tells Kate he fell for her because she’s unpretentious; what you see is what you get. The doctor enters and shares that what they are dealing with is early- and rapid-onset Alzheimer’s. Kate feels stunned and hopeless.
Chapter 16 Summary
They break the news of Cam’s diagnosis to their parents, who are all devastated. At work, Kate suddenly realizes her pregnancy symptoms are gone. She’s already been bargaining with the universe to save Cam, but now she thinks, “Save my baby […] And you can have Cam” (137). Horrified by her own thoughts, she feels cramps and rushes to the bathroom only to learn she is miscarrying. When she asks a co-worker for help, the girl fetches Hugh. Kate is angry that he is there and accuses him, “You always know what to say. You’re constantly doing exactly what’s needed. You cope with everything, no matter how hard. Your life is just this shiny, untarnished, extraordinary, seamless, easy experience and I am envious as hell” (139). Hugh doesn’t react or judge. He drives her home and reminds Kate she will get through this because she has no choice. Cam greets her at the door and they both sob.
Chapter 17 Summary
Having breakfast in bed, Cam tells Kate he loves her and wants her to remember that, even when he can’t. A few weeks later, they attend a barbecue with Kate’s work colleagues. Cam and Hugh hit it off instantly, and Kate observes how they’re even dressed alike in linen shorts and white T-shirts. Hugh knows of Cam’s diagnosis, and when Hugh looks at her, Kate feels seen. In the bathroom, her colleague Sophie jokes that Kate has it all with her fit husband and adorable baby. Kate tries to remember she is lucky because she has a great love, a man she adores. When she emerges from the bathroom, she can’t see Charlie and panics. He is playing along the shore, and she and Cam rush to him at the same time. Kate knows this is a harsh preview of what’s to come. At home, Cam is distraught that he’s going to abandon her and Charlie when he doesn’t want to. He wants Kate to promise she will open herself to love again and not run away out of guilt, but Kate doesn’t want to let Cam go.
Chapters 8-17 Analysis
These flashbacks provide the backstory for Cam’s illness, pinpointing the beginnings of Kate’s loss, but they are framed by her developing connection with Hugh. Hugh is woven into Kate’s life even before he shows up as Kate’s boss in a meet-cute when he gives her his shirt at the gym. He remains woven into her romantic life, as Kate is wearing Hugh’s rugby shirt when she has sex with Cam after the gym incident and conceives their second child. Hugh is present for Kate when Cam is in the hospital, when she miscarries, and when Cam loses track of Charlie; in fact, Kate holds Hugh responsible for not watching Charlie, as if she has already transferred her emotional dependency and co-parenting needs from her husband to Hugh. These chapters continue a subtle rewriting of Cam’s place in Kate’s life with Hugh, foreshadowing the romantic developments that follow.
Kate acknowledges the irony that her husband, who is a respected professor in his field and a man who built his career on books, should lose his mental acuity and his language. The irony, sadness, and loss in these chapters are occasionally balanced by moments of humor, like the meet-cute at the gym. Hugh literally catches Kate when she falls and offers her protection on their very first meeting, again signaling his suitability as a romantic partner. Hugh is a fair boss who doesn’t consider pregnancy or Kate’s other emotional challenges a detriment to her work, which signals his integrity as a person and makes him a sympathetic character.
Kate does not express attraction to Hugh in these chapters despite the McDreamy reference at the gym, an allusion to a surgeon character who was played by actor Patrick Dempsey on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy (2005-2015). But when Hugh describes the type of woman he is looking for, he is describing Kate, confirmed when Cam uses the same words later to describe her: She is unpretentious, and what you see is what you get. Kate’s observation at the picnic that the men are similarly dressed confirms the link between them as love interests; it is as though Hugh is already beginning to step in as Kate’s partner. Kate’s attempt to set Hugh up with Grace seems like an unconscious move to keep Hugh close by training his affections on her best friend, her foil and counterpart.
The challenges Kate encounters with conceiving, birthing, and nursing Charlie speak to the theme of Motherhood and Parenting but also impact Kate’s identity; these struggles have made her doubt herself and her own resilience. The miscarriage foreshadows her loss of Cam, diminishing the family she imagined she’d have. The irony that she attacks Hugh for his seemingly untarnished, easy life emerges later when the narrative reveals what Hugh has lost; it’s an irony perpetuated by the effusions of Kate’s colleague Sophie, who thinks Kate’s life looks wonderful. The secret that Hugh is the only one in her work life who knows of Cam’s illness bonds them but is a foreshadowing of the secret that will separate them later in the novel.
Reinforcing the theme of Attraction and Romantic Love, these chapters confirm the importance of the novel’s titular love notes in Kate and Cam’s relationship. They reflect how Cam and Kate met in university and show Cam’s nickname for her, Red. Kate’s attachment to Cam continues in these notes, but they will also be the device that frees her in the end by revealing the knowledge she needs to truly move on.
