Leaving Time: the impossible-to-forget story with a twist you won't see coming by the number one bestselling author of A Spark of Light

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With plenty of twists and a surprising ending, [Leaving Time] explores the grieving process and what happens when we cannot move on. I absolutely loved this book! It is a wonderful story of love and respect, grief and loss plus the love between a mother and her child, be it elephant or human; the telling is shared between Jenna, Alice, Serenity and Virgil. This very moving and poignant story is full of mystery and intrigue, but the twist at the end of the book blew me away! Absolutely brilliant, and something I most certainly did not expect! Jodi Picoult has a winner with Leaving Time, in my opinion. Highly recommended. A tragic occurrence on the compound ten years ago, when Jenna was three, resulted in the death of a woman and serious injury to Alice. Alice was taken to the hospital, from which she disappeared. At the same time Jenna's dad was confined to a mental institution and Jenna went to live with her grandmother.

Leaving Time - Wikipedia Leaving Time - Wikipedia

Virgil, an ex-detective turned private eye, who now prefers to investigate the contents of a bottle, became disillusioned with his job whilst investigating a case at the elephant sanctuary in which one person was found dead and the other unconscious. While his gut instinct had told him to dig deeper, his partner, Donny, had warned him off investigating further, preferring to bury an inconsistency in the evidence they had procured. Virgil grapples with helping Jenna when he suspects discovering the truth might be more painful to her than never knowing. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew a truth that it might hurt someone to hear? What did you do? Serenity’s fake psychic readings are successful, she says, because people look for sense in the nonsensical. Do you agree or disagree? If a psychic reading brings someone comfort or helps them grieve, do you think it matters if the message is faked? Also interspersed with the story are extensive passages about elephants, who are highly intelligent animals with close family ties. An elephant mother would never desert her family, unlike what Alice apparently did to Jenna. Picoult’s novel explores grief, memory, and motherhood through the unlikely lens of elephant behavior... The pachyderms are as complex as the humans, making the journey memorable and poignant.New evidence in hand and with a new sense of hopefulness, Jenna seeks out Virgil Stanhope, a private investigator who was a detective in the Boone Police Department involved in the botched investigation of Alice Metcalf’s disappearance a decade earlier. Virgil is a broken man, plagued by troubles with the bottle, but in the end agrees to work with Jenna and Serenity to find the missing Alice Metcalf and end his despondency over his incompetence and failure in the initial investigation.

Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads

I really loved the story lines with the elephants. I give the elephants 5 stars, but I don't know enough about elephants to know how much of what Picoult writes is factual and how much is anthropomorphism. The blurb of the book speaks of this book being about the mother/daughter bond. I get that with the elephants - completely demonstrated with the examples from the elephant world. I'm guessing Picoult wanted the experiences of the elephants and of Alice/Jenna to be reflective of each other but it doesn't really happen. For us to believe in a bond between Alice and Jenna that transcends death we need to see that loving bond. Instead, we see Alice regularly dump Jenna on others, or leave her alone, so her mother can attend to the elephants or . The problem is we don't see Alice spend any quality time with Jenna or show that she loves her. We see far more love and concern for the elephants. Jodi Picoult has done it again! A couple different storylines merging together told from multiple character perspectives (in true Picoult style!). An elephant sanctuary sets the stage for this book, and I immediately fell in love with the stories surrounding the elephants and their histories- some happy, some tragic. Jenna Metcalf is searching for her mother- as she disappeared one night when the elephants trampled and killed someone and Alice Metcalf went to the hospital and disappeared. Jenna ropes in Serenity Jones (psychic) and Virgil (detective) to help find her missing mom. The cast of characters was quite the motley crew of misfits, but I grew to love them all individually. A few of the threads were unnecessary for me like the mentally challenged husband/father, and the whole Nevvie story. What really brought this one up for me was the unexpected ending. I think my jaw hit the ground as I wasn't expecting it, and then become emotional relating the mother/daughter relationship to the elephants and their calves. Tusk asked Jodi a few questions about her experiences with elephants while researching for Leaving Time.It seems a small, very angry and vocal Gooodreads mob of reviewers absolutely HATE this book and let their opinions be heard in no uncertain terms. Serenity Jones was a psychic; but her powers had been lost several years before after she famously gave the wrong information to grieving parents. Virgil Stanhope was the detective who originally went to the scene of the tragedy ten years previously and had since left the police force… Regardless … a very good story; unexpected and unanticipated twists and turns; some intense emotional reactions! This story follows 13-year-old Jenna Metcalf who is determined to find her mother, who went missing 10 years prior and was never found. It’s true that the bond between a mother and her child is unbreakable and I can attest to that wholeheartedly. Being an immigrant who left hers behind six years ago, to take up residence on the other side of the world, was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But the difference between me, Jenna and Alice, was that I was an adult and mine was planned and, although I suffered severe personal trauma and grief for the first two years, nothing can be worse than your mother being wrenched from you and not having any answers to the questions that linger but remain unspoken.