Last Seen Leaving by Kelly Braffet was quite an enjoyable read. It is a story of a mother searching for her "missing" daughter. In reality the daughter is just a bit of a vagabond, always searching for something different. This is revealed to us right from the start, and the novel is told from both of their perspectives, interspersed with flashbacks to their past.
The past story deals with the father in their family. He was a pilot working for some kind of dodgy government company. He was reported to be dead when the daughter was 8 years old and the mother never recovered from it. She moved across the country and became a new age type. She tried to get answers about her husband's death from the company but they were not forthcoming and so she dealt with things the best way that she could, but the daughter was not really considered properly in her grief.
The two became more and more distant over the years, and after the daughter moves out of the house she often does not return the mother's calls. However, when the daughter moves, she always sends her mother a postcard to let her know of her whereabouts. When we meet them in the beginning of the novel, the daughter has taken off with a stranger that she meets after a car accident, and the mother is trying to reach her daughter and fails to do so.
The mother then goes back across the country to the city that they lived in when the father was still alive. She searches for her daughter, thinking that she has been killed, talking to her friends, coworkers and police. Most of them think that it is not that unusual for her to be missing as she seems to move on quite a lot.
I thought that having the novel being read from both perspectives was a good way of making the story interesting and the author executed it well. You are left wondering if something bad is in fact going to befall the daughter at some point. There is lots revealed within the book and I was only mildly unsatisfied with the ending. But I am difficult to please with endings. This book really sucked me in, I didn't want to put it down and I even would read as I walked around cooking dinner. I would definitely recommend it.
The past story deals with the father in their family. He was a pilot working for some kind of dodgy government company. He was reported to be dead when the daughter was 8 years old and the mother never recovered from it. She moved across the country and became a new age type. She tried to get answers about her husband's death from the company but they were not forthcoming and so she dealt with things the best way that she could, but the daughter was not really considered properly in her grief.
The two became more and more distant over the years, and after the daughter moves out of the house she often does not return the mother's calls. However, when the daughter moves, she always sends her mother a postcard to let her know of her whereabouts. When we meet them in the beginning of the novel, the daughter has taken off with a stranger that she meets after a car accident, and the mother is trying to reach her daughter and fails to do so.
The mother then goes back across the country to the city that they lived in when the father was still alive. She searches for her daughter, thinking that she has been killed, talking to her friends, coworkers and police. Most of them think that it is not that unusual for her to be missing as she seems to move on quite a lot.
I thought that having the novel being read from both perspectives was a good way of making the story interesting and the author executed it well. You are left wondering if something bad is in fact going to befall the daughter at some point. There is lots revealed within the book and I was only mildly unsatisfied with the ending. But I am difficult to please with endings. This book really sucked me in, I didn't want to put it down and I even would read as I walked around cooking dinner. I would definitely recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment