Review by Booklist Review
Prolific novelist Leavitt (With or Without You, 2020) spins a tale of young love, loss, and new beginnings. Ella, 22, is released from prison after serving only six of her 25-year sentence, a correction due to a forced confession and lawyer negligence. Her loving and faithful mother, Helen, whisks her back to New York. Ella had been convicted of the attempted murder of her boyfriend Jude's father, and after landing in prison, discovered she was pregnant and had to give up the baby. Now freed, she determines to find her child and to make a life of her own, away from Helen. Ella lands in Ann Arbor, Michigan, becomes an advice columnist under a new name, and tries to insert herself into the lives of the child's adoptive parents. Flashbacks reveal more about Ella and Jude's tender love and Helen's devotion to Ella. Readers also see Jude in the current day, having moved on, and Helen, struggling to hold onto her daughter. This is ripe with improbabilities, but readers who crave drama will love it.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The haphazard latest from Leavitt (With or Without You) begins with 22-year-old Ella receiving an early release from a New York state prison after her conviction at 15 for the attempted murder of her boyfriend's father. Her mother, Helen, hopes to rehabilitate her daughter by providing "fierce love." Ella, however, is focused on finding the baby she gave up for adoption shortly after her incarceration. Her search takes her to Ann Arbor, Mich., where, in one of the novel's many implausible turns, she begins writing an advice column for a local newspaper. As she gets on her feet, she tries to befriend her daughter's adoptive parents while keeping her own identity a secret. The present-day story of Ella's quest alternates with sections centered on her teenage boyfriend, Jude, a wealthy, unhappy boy whose father physically abuses him. Leavitt provides depth by exploring Ella and Helen's complicated and sometimes conflicting maternal feelings, but her propulsive narrative is marred by a melodramatic conclusion and perplexing anachronisms ("evidence at Ella's trial involved a tea made of poisonous foxglove"). This fails to make the most of its potent ingredients. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Can we ever live down our past mistakes? Does it depend on how many there are? "QUEENS KILLER-CUTIE'S ATTEMPTED MURDER. BOYFRIEND'S DAD FED TOXIC TEA. REDHEAD CAUGHT RED-HANDED." The tabloid scandals start early and never stop in Leavitt's latest, with a Tilt-a-Whirl plot encompassing Endless Love--type teenage passion with a side of attempted murder, homegrown poison plants, a jailhouse pregnancy, a long-ago rape in Central Park, stalking, domestic violence, and a life destroyed when a character's mother gets drunk and spills her secrets to a guy in a bar who turns out to be a journalist. (Wait, didn't she see the fedora?) The story opens in upstate New York in April 2018, when Ella Levy is released from prison after having served only six years of the 25-year sentence she began at age 15. An investigative reporter has revealed both that her confession was forced and that the judge who sentenced her was taking kickbacks from the prison. But her conviction has not actually been overturned, and it's not going to be easy to find work as a young convicted felon--good thing there's a little newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that needs an advice columnist. The media certainly plays many roles in this story, which has a kind of naïve and fearless narrative energy that will be familiar to readers of Leavitt's earlier novels, including With or Without You (2020) and Cruel Beautiful World (2016). Each of the troubled central characters--Ella; her mother, Helen; her old boyfriend, Jude Stein--gets a nice, vanilla love interest to withhold their secrets from...UNTIL IT'S ALMOST TOO LATE! One complaint: Doesn't the horrible villain deserve a bit more comeuppance than they get? If you love old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, this may be just your cup of foxglove tea. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
