This post may contain affiliate links. For more info on this, visit my disclosure page. Thank you for your support in this way!

Leaving Time’s Back-of-the-book Description:

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pours over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.
 
Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, only to later doubt her gifts, and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who’d originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.
 
As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish.

My Thoughts

It’s no secret that I’m a big Jodi Picoult fan! I *think* I’ve read every one of her books (except her newest but it’s on my list!) so when Leaving Time came out I was already excited to read it. But when I found out it was a story that heavily involved elephants I was ecstatic! Fun fact – I love elephants! I’ve even been collecting elephants (figurines and such) since I was a little kid.

Anyways, Leaving Time was a really good book, it was just a little different from most of her others. That can probably be attributed to the fact that she delves into some questionable (in that it’s not her usual genre) territory, like psychics and the supernatural.

While the issue of psychics and the surprising supernatural twist at the end was a little distracting, there was still a really great story here about love, loss, and personal relationships – including the important relationship between a mother and daughter. I also really loved the connections between the main character, Jenna, and the two people she gets to help her in her search. Picoult did a really great job developing them by giving them their own personal struggles and desires.

I especially appreciated all the research she must have done about elephants and the way she ties in interesting facts about them and how similar they can be to humans. Plus, the fact that the mother’s job is to research and care for elephants made for a really interesting, emotionally deep character.

Buy it now!

Favorite quotes from Leaving Time:

“You can’t blame someone if they honestly don’t understand that their reality isn’t the same as yours.”

 

“I’m the princess in an ivory tower, except every brick is made of history, and I built this prison myself.”

 

“It was almost as if there was a tear in the fabric I was made of, and he was the only color thread that would match to stitch it back up.”

In Conclusion

This book get’s 4 out of 5 stars. It’s really a good, pull-at-your-heart-string read that I would definitely recommend, especially to other elephant lovers or those with a weak spot for mother-daughter relationships.

Also, I maintain that ALL Jodi Picoult books are worth reading at least once, and this is no exception!

 

Check out the great Pin-able quotes below!

%d bloggers like this: