The Leaving by Tara Altebrando: My interests are leaving

The Leaving 

by 

Tara Altebrando

Six children disappeared eleven years ago. The book begins with five of them coming back. Considering they've been missing since they were five or six, they’re fine . . . except that they can’t remember anything from the last eleven years. Scarlett and Lucas, two of the returned children, try to work together to discover why they were taken, what happened to them, and what happened to the sixth child. Meanwhile that sixth child’s sister, Avery begins to suspect that they’re lying about their memory loss. Between their three narratives, they sift through years old evidence to find answers.

Characters

Lucas: this child is so angry. I mean, he should be, he’s forgotten the last eleven years of his life. But, gosh, everything he said was bitter or angry. Dude, your personality shouldn’t be completely summed up by the words ‘pissed’ and ‘off’. Well that’s not completely true. He liked to take pictures. So I guess that makes him a really angry artist.

Scarlett: could sew? Her mum thinks she was abducted by aliens. Yeah that’s all I got. I feel like the author got memory loss confused with no personality. Now, I’m no expert about memory loss but I’m decently sure I’d still be a sarcastic little twat with or without my memories. I mean, certain things have got to be instinctual, right? Still at least Scarlett did stuff. In the entire book, she was the instigator for everything that moved the plot along. So at least she’s got that going for her.

Note from the editor: That's really interesting, the character without the personality driving the plot. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it...

Avery: I don’t like Avery. She was shockingly narcistic to the point of being jealous of the people who’d been taken and completely unapologetic about it. she was mean to her best friend, rude to her then boyfriend who she promptly dumped when Lucas came along for . . . no reason as far as I could see. 

Yeah, I didn’t like her.

Note from the editor: I don't like her either, and I didn't even read the book. Jerkazoid.

A crap ton of other characters who contributed to exactly 0% of the plot: why were there six kids in the first place if only two of them were going to be involved at all? One of them disappeared completely and he had maybe a page devoted to who he was. There was some girl who could draw. And another who could write. That’s about all I got honestly. If they weren’t going to contribute anything then why do they exist?

Likes

There was some interesting formatting: specifically, for the two kids who’d been kidnapped. For example, Scarlett’s font would go all crazy when she tried to remember things she couldn’t. Kind of like her brain was erroring out. At least, that’s how I imagined it. Lucas, meanwhile, had moments where he thought more in pictures and sounds than actual worlds which I also liked. It was an interesting way of getting the feelings of the characters across.

I really wanted to know the answers to this mystery: really the buildup is fabulous. Well, it’s way too slow but still! I wanted desperately to know what happened to them. I mean you saw how much I disliked the characters, and yet I continued to read it for hours at a time. That’s impressive. Unfortunately the real answers couldn’t live up to the expectations.

Dislikes

The answers were stupid: literally nothing was answered. Well, it was sort of answered but there were so many leaps of logic and inconsistencies that they might as well have just said 

‘yep, aliens’.  

Which really, really bugs me because by the end I was so fed up with the characters that the only thing keeping me going was the mystery. This book was described as a thriller mystery. And maybe I’m weird but I thought that thrillers usually involved interesting villains. Everybody was so excited about this book that I expected some Agatha Christie stuff to go down, you know? Some real commentary or study on human nature and what kind of circumstances would drive someone to run off with six kindergartners. But, nope! I got some odd conspiracy theory plot worthy of X-Files. But less explained than X-Files, if you can believe it.

I wanted more mystery, less ‘he loves me, he loves me not’: for goodness sakes, you guys! You were kidnapped and held against your will for eleven years! Don’t you think that’s slightly more interesting than whether you were involved with hostage #1 or hostage #2. 

Can we please get back to the possible psychopath on the loose? Please.

I’ve said before that some books manage to skate by on their premises. The Leaving has an awesome one! Six kids disappear, five come back with zero memory of what happened-that’s awesome! The problem is that the characters, at least the ones we got to see, were dull as bricks. Heck! Even the mystery didn’t hold up when the conclusion finally came around. All that, coupled with the unsatisfactory answers, makes me feel like the whole book was a waste of time.