Daisy Alpert Florin

I wasn't exactly sure how to review this book, because on the one hand I really liked it, but on the other it feels strange to enjoy a book that is full of such sad topics. I adored the main character and her development throughout the timeline was so interesting, and to get to see her looking back and interpreting things. This book did a great job of dealing with a complicated issue, allowing the reader to empathize with her and to wish they were there to fight for her. You could see where she would be drawn to Connelly, even though you knew she shouldn't. The part about the professor and the kid was very original.

For readers of My Dark Vanessa that don't want quite as dark of a novel. It still deals with the same content but it doesn't feel as hopeless in this one, which I enjoyed because I wanted her to be okay.

All this being said, there is SA in this book as well as the sexual manipulation/abuse of a young girl, so if these things are triggers to you then it may be best to skip this one.… (mehr)

In the past decade, I have read a lot of books about twenty-something women trying to find themselves — and not enjoyed most of them — but My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin hit all the right notes for me. In the late 1990s, Isabel Rosen is slouching through her last year at Wilder College in New Hampshire like a lot of people — trying to figure it all out as graduation approaches. Florin sprinkles in just the right amount of omniscient to her first-person narration to give readers glimpses of the past and future as we watch Isabel deal with a complicated present. I liked My Last Innocent Year, and readers who enjoy coming-of-age, college novels will, too.… (mehr)