Book review: The Last Time I Saw You by Eleanor Moran

My edition: Paperback, to be published on 7 February 2013 by Quercus, 594 pages.

Description: When Olivia Berrington gets the call to tell her that her best friend from university has been killed in a car crash in New York, her life is turned upside down. Her relationship with Sally was an exhilarating roller coaster, until a shocking betrayal drove them apart. But if Sally had really turned her back, why is her little girl named Olivia?

As questions mount about the fatal accident, Olivia is forced to go back and unravel her untangled history. But as Sally's secrets start to spill out, Olivia's left asking herself if the past is best kept buried.

Rating:



The Last Time I Saw You is a novel about friendship and love, and the sometimes faltering boundaries between the two, that will have the reader intrigued from start to finish.

The news that her former best friend has lost her life in a car accident, catapults Livvy back to her university years. Wounds that have never truly healed are forced back open to fill her both with renewed confusion over their lost friendship as well as hurt over the loss of someone she used to love so dearly.

She meets Sally's husband William at the funeral and he tentatively asks if she would like to talk to him about Sally's past, so he has the chance to get to know a period in his wife's life he wasn't a part of. Livvy agrees and by confiding her many memories of Sally in him she realises that despite the fact that she used to share everything with her friend that this wasn't necessarily a mutual courtesy. There were many things left unsaid between the two, and as frustrations and secrets slowly slipped between their friendship it led to the abrupt break-up from which neither of them ever truly recovered.

The stories told by Livvy also paint a completely different picture of Sally than William could've ever imagined. Written down as a series of flashbacks, the nearer to the present the stories get the more shocking they seem to become, until William and Livvy realise they may have never known Sally at all.

Author Eleanor Moran managed to keep me on the edge of my seat for the duration of the novel, revealing just enough to keep me well and truly engaged yet keeping some crucial pieces of the puzzle under wraps to ensure that the unfolding plot remained exciting until the very end.


Many thanks to Quercus for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.