Reviewer: Kate
I received a copy of What She Left Us by Stephanie Elliot in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
Jenna and Courtney are dealing with the unexpected death of their mother in different ways. Jenna broke off her engagement to the man she thought she’d love forever, while Courtney headed back to college to take charge of a dorm-floor full of college students as a resident assistant.
Six months later, Jenna is fueled by panic over the news that the sisters may have the same disease that caused their mother’s death and she makes an irrational decision – she packs it up and heads to college to be with Courtney. The timing couldn’t be worse for Courtney, who’s discovering love for the first time with Mitch, a sexy guitar player who may just be off limits.
Emotionally unstable, Jenna wonders if she made the worst mistake of her life by breaking off her engagement with Darren, and when he shows up to make amends, she can’t help but second-guess her decision. But then there’s Clay, the compassionate bartender at Klippy’s who seems to understand everything Jenna’s going through. And those hazel eyes just seem to see right through to Jenna’s soul…
As the girls maneuver through their unpredictable futures, trying to manage their new health risks as well as tumultuous love lives, Courtney finds a disturbing photograph that indicates there may be more to their family than she ever imagined.
This stunning revelation could shatter the sisters to the very core, making them question everything they thought they knew about their family, their faith, their past and, most of all, each other.
Review:
The synopsis of What She Left Us leaves little to the imagination. It in fact tells you pretty much the entire story. A savvy reader might actually be able to fill in all the blanks from just the blurb. Other reviewers have said things like “lots of twists and turns,” “never know where it leads next,” “page tuner”. And while on the surface I agree with these assessments, at the end of the day What She Left Us is neither a suspense nor a thriller—it’s a family story.
There is a truth about What She Left Us that is both beautiful and haunting.
I think this truth is actually rather simple in the fact that families are complex. Children never can fully understand or know the lives of their parents; and likewise, parents can really never fully understand how their actions or inactions affect their children. There can be more strangers in one family household than in a subway car. And in that truth, life can often be lonely. The people who should know you the best, because they love you the most, can leave you clueless about your place in the universe. At the same time, they can also be an unshakable bedrock foundation upon which to build ourselves and our futures. It’s rather a contradiction, and in a nutshell, Life. That in essence is what What She Left Us is about.
I greatly enjoyed reading What She Left Us and anyone with a less than tidy family situation will also be able to dig in to this compelling story. While I didn’t find the health risk or the revelation all that stunning personally (perhaps I’m jaded and saw it coming), I did find that it felt genuine. This was a situation that someone somewhere was probably going through right at that moment, at any moment. I appreciate the truthful way in which Stephanie Elliot allowed her characters to reveal themselves as flawed and f.i.n.e. (you know the reference—freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional). In that way, the sisters became three dimensional. And although I wanted to strangle both at times, there is a likability here that will compel the reader further into the story, even if you have already figured out how it all ends.
