Book Review: "The Last Time I Saw You" by Jo Leevers

Now, I loved Jo Leevers' first book entitled Tell Me How This Ends. One of the best novels of its kind that I have read for a very long time was followed up by another novel which is just as strong. The themes that pervade the novel The Last Time I Saw You are cyclical in their natures: motherhood, rumour, distrust and secrecy. Much like her previous novel, we have a secret buried deep in the past which, as the time structures change, can put characters in mortal danger.

Echoing themes from previous texts and chapters that are short and fast-moving, we get constant insights into the under-pressure nature of each major character, what they are going through and when. As Jo Leevers tells us yet another story of segments in different timelines and, also within her previous book, she keeps filling in small gaps one by one, keeping the reader hanging on to her every word, wanting to find out how this really ends and if it does at all.

One thing that this writer possesses if anything as a major talent is how she keeps her readers invested in the storylines (and there really is more than one per book) through these multi-dimensional characters who make both good and bad decisions. These intensely human characters which we can project ourselves on to become the leaders of these plots in which we do not watch them take a journey, but we take the journey by their side. This is something I find many writers of this age cannot do in this kind of balance.

Georgina is only a while away from giving birth to her own child when she comes face to face with her past. A viral photograph alongside a story of a girl being rescued after being missing shows up on her feed and immediately, she recognises one of the rescuers in the photo as being her mother who went missing many years' ago. Determined to find out what is really going on here, she shows her brother Dan this strange uncanny photograph and they take off to where the picture was taken. Throughout this journey, they will uncover new secrets as they constantly question why their mother left in the first place.

I liked how each part of this book interlinked with the idea that people sometimes screw up and make bad decisions and that sometimes, we have to accept that. The death of Finn is one of the ways we see this. As Dan and Georgina are in the car, Georgina admits to Dan that she was the last one to speak to Finn because she could not pick him up from London town because she was somewhere else and it was nighttime. Dan then admits something really quite horrific and we find out how both people in a situation could have done the wrong thing without knowing it. I find this a foreshadowing to the conclusion of the book where it takes everyone making impulsive, but bad decisions to create what is a storm of secrecy.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book was the switching between the chapters on Nancy and the chapters on Georgina. This is because as much as we can draw differences between their voices, we can also draw some similarities between their characters which also, I believe, foreshadows something we find out at the end of the book. I think it is important to notice how various characters are similar and different, who the outliers are and why these characters don't fit in or only fit in with one other character. It tells us so much about them so that even when we do find out their secrets, they can be better understood as we now know them like a friend. We are more likely to want to know their reasoning.

Jo Leevers creates a book filled with mirror images of children being born, mysteries unfolding about who visited who and who spoke to who, men who have little to no respect for women or children, ideas that encapsulate families who no longer speak to each other and so much more. The past and present collide over and over again with small, stepping answers until the very end where we get the greatest reveal of them all.