Letting Go

Janet Kingi is awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call bringing her devastating news: her best friend, Callie, has taken her own life.  Reeling, Janet travels to Auckland to help arrange the funeral, and there meets Callie’s work colleague, Tom, who she believes may have been in love with her friend.  She returns home with Tom’s phone number and a box containing Callie’s journals.  As she reads her friend’s words and talks to Tom she hopes that she can understand what led Callie to take such a drastic step.

Readers will set out on Janet’s journey with anticipation, in what begins as a refreshingly different novel set against the backdrop of New Zealand.  However, they may find that the story soon begins to drag as the author constantly interjects incidents and information that aren’t relevant to carrying the narrative forward.  Her difficulty with correct tense usage also makes the book somewhat hard work to read at points.  There is a lack of depth both to the characters and the story, and one feels that the writer is just skimming the surface, particularly of Callie’s illness and Janet’s grief.  The book starts off in a very promising way but one can’t help feeling that the author doesn’t exploit the story’s potential and simply allows it to be reduced to a sweet romance.  With some reworking, however, this could be an excellent, powerful and thought-provoking novel.

Heather Belleguelle