What We Leave Behind by Sue Halpern ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

 

A tenderhearted story of two very different women grappling with the messy emotional legacies passed down by their parents.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site.  A free book was provided for an honest review.   

June 2025; Harper Perennial; 978-0063415386
audio, ebook, print (352 pages); women's fiction

This character-driven novel is about two very different women and how they handle life, grief, and the pasts that were handed down to them by their parents.

Melody is a high school senior when her adopted mother dies in a freak car accident.  Her father wasn't able to help her navigate her grief because he was an emotional wreck at the loss of his wife.  Melody has always known that she's adopted, but doesn't have any interest in finding her birth family.  As she deals with her grief, she decides not to go to college but to work on a farm collective.  At first, it looked like this decision was made because that's what a boy she had a crush on decided to do, but even after she got over her crush, she still planned to skip college, much to her father's dismay.  Her best friend convinces her to try to find out about her birth family, and the results send her on a downward emotional spiral and threaten everything she knew about her adopted family.

Candace is in her 40s and still dealing with the emotional baggage from her parents' contentious marriage.  She has no desire to marry or have children.  Her best friend, Paul. is gay and he manages to get her out to socialize and meet no people, but she's still happiest with her solitary life until she meets Melody's father and begins to wonder what it would be like to be in a romantic relationship

This book is interesting, and the struggle each woman goes through is life-changing.  My problem with the book is that I didn't like Melody or Candice.  They both seemed very involved in life and didn't really get interesting until they were facing life changes.  Also, for most of the book, we had chapters by Melody and chapters by Candace, but there was no connection between them until almost the end of the book, and then it was a very tenuous connection.

From the blurb:  What We Leave Behind grapples with destiny, belonging, and love, and makes us question our own idea of the kind we’re born into and the kind we create.  

Buy What We Leave Behind at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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