Left

Left

by Tamar Ossowski

Genre: Fiction

Synopsis:  Therese Wolley made a promise.  She works as a secretary, shops for groceries on Saturdays, and takes care of her two girls.  She doesn't dwell on the fact that her girls are fatherless, mostly because her own father abandoned her before she was born, and she has done just fine without him.

Even though her older daughter regularly wakes with nightmares and her younger one whispers letters under her breath, she doesn't shift from her resolve that everything will be fine.  She promises...and they believe.

Until the morning an obituary in the newspaper changes everything.  Therese immediately knows what she has to do.  She cannot delay what she has planned, and she cannot find the words to explain her heartbreaking decisions to her daughters.  She considers her responsibilities, her girls, and a promise she made years ago.  Then she does the only thing that any real mother would do.  She goes on the run with one daughter...and abandons the other.

Left is told from the perspective of Franny, the autistic sister who is left behind; Matilda, the troubled older sister who vows to go back and save her; and Therese, a mother on the run.

From the book jacket

Review:  First of all this synopsis is not accurate. Therese is not on the run.  She's not hiding from anything or anyone.  If she was hiding or running for someone, that is what I consider on the run.  Therese just decides to follow her heart.  Since I didn't know these things before reading the book I kept waiting to find out why she was on the run because it sure didn't seem like she was on the run.  I was left quite confused as a I was reading.  I was also waiting for the answers to all the secrets in the book and you don't find them out until about 15 pages from the end.  The author kept dropping very vague hints and foreshadowing moments but nothing was concrete enough to let me figure out what was going it.  It kind of drove me crazy as I really dislike knowing something is happening but not knowing what it is.  I was really intrigued with this book but after reading it all, I just got to thinking about how selfish Therese was and how she did not have the best interest of her daughters in mind- she just had her own interests in mind and I really didn't understand where Leah was coming from at all. There were just so many parts of this book that left me confused and parts that were quite strange that made me rate this a 3 stars.

Rating: 3 stars