What she Left by T.R. Richmond


3 Stars

This was a strange book and had a very different format to books that I am usually use to reading. The book is written through diary entries, emails, letters and social media. The premise for this book really enticed me, but unfortunately the story overall didn't grip me as much as I though. 

Alice Salmon's life after her death in early 2012 is beginning to be pieced together by one of her previous professors, Dr Jeremy Cooke. The story winds between Alice's previous life and the time after she has died. The story tells us of her love life, her friends, her family and even has snippets of her work as a journalist. The story also starts putting together the picture of what happened to Alice in her final moments and whether Alice jumped or was pushed into the river where her life finally ended. 

The story throughout this book went up and down for me in how interesting it was. At times, I really enjoyed reading about the investigation of Alice's death and some of her background; other times I was bored silly of Jeremy's letters to one of his friends. There was definitely a lot for the reader to unearth and to think about what was going on with the main characters. I certainly had a lot of it panned out. The only twist for me in this book was finally finding out whether Alice jumped or she was pushed. My thoughts on this went between; sometimes I thought Alice had jumper (and maybe this was a ploy by the writer) and sometimes I knew who had pushed her. I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed any of the characters and it was sometimes hard to understand any of their background due to the way the book was written. Alice and Jeremy certainly had the most characterisation and we did know quite a lot of their story by the end; however, I still didn't love or hate either.

I don't have any really big issues with this book overall. It did take me quite a few sittings to get through this book as it was quite dull in parts. There was a lot of unnecessary entries from Alice's journalism work, favourite quotes/songs and social media inputs. I skipped a lot of the unnecessary parts, especially towards the end. 

Overall, this book sounds better than what it actually is. Maybe the writing style decreased the ways in which the writer could convey certain plots within the story. I'm glad I managed to finish the book to find out what had happened, that was certainly unexpected!

Happy reading :)

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