3.5 stars
Synopsis from Goodreads:
It was the summer of 1985,
and she was young and inexperienced, but longing to love and to be loved in
return, when he entered her life.
At the same time, while she was desperately seeking the love and approval of a
mother who never wanted her in the first place, events totally beyond her
control claimed her as their victim, leaving those she left behind unable to
cope with the enormity of her absence.
"WHY SHE LEFT US” is written as a series of diary entries, the events seen
through the eyes of several different people.
But at its center is a love story chronicling a romance that transforms the
lives of two people who, for too brief a period of time, experienced the
greatest happiness they had ever known.
My Review:
Why She Left Us is the story of a family so fragmented, so
dysfunctional, thrust into circumstances so sad and irreparable. It is narrated
through different people’s entries in their diaries at different times
throughout a span of two years. It is a coming of age story of two young
sisters whose tragic tales are told from their point of view as well as that of
their family. Betsy and Monica and their
younger sister Ellen, grew up clamoring for the love and attention of their mother,
Jean. Jean’s priority is to keep the man
in her life happy. Her spinster sister,
Lucille, is more a mother to the girls than she is. The events that lead to the
plot of the story revolve around what happens to the relationship between Betsy
and Monica as a result of a lie that erodes one sister’s trust in the other.
Confused was the predominant theme in my mind as I read this
book. The timeline seemed to jump from past to present or vice versa, that I
found myself paging back to read the dates that were indicated on the Cycles at
the beginning of each set of chapters. The
story is well written, and each character’s voice can be heard emanating from
the writings in the diary. I just couldn’t shake off the feeling of
disorientation when moving from one section to the next.
I did find that it became more difficult to put the book
down as the story progressed. It was like watching a train wreck happening in
slow motion. Just the way the author wrote about Carl and his despicable antics
and the foreboding that Monica had indeed done something terrible, captured my attention. The ending
really threw in the clincher, something that I did not see coming. It evoked some sort of emotion in me and I
forgot all about my confounded state. Now, I wanted to stick around to
understand why Betsy did what she did. Why her entry dates had always been out
of sequence, how peace was going to come to this oh, so broken family. Those that are left behind must learn to live
with the shattered pieces of a life that could have been saved, that Jean
should have saved. Sadly, peace will
never come.
Connect with David Dennis Here
Purchase the Book Here
Connect with David Dennis Here
Purchase the Book Here
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