I’m a huge fan of the author and absolutely had to read this. I thought it was terrific. I like the way the chapters bounced between other characters, even Noah who is dead when the book starts so not everything is focused through Callie and her mother. Callie is a fantastic character, full of love despite the stress of caring for her brother and her job as a carer looking after someone who is unsettlingly like Noah. I loved the way the author explored the fragmented relationship between Callie and her mother, especially the dark revelations at the end which shatter everything Callie thought she knew about her life and family.

Despite the teasing chick lit mystery feel of the cover, this is a dark and deeply affecting novel about trauma, childhood abuse, and the burdens of family told through the unravelling of an unreliable narrator. ⁣⁣
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The narrator Callie is a residential carer who splits her time between caring for her client Frey and her brother Noah. The book does not name conditions explicitly, but Noah exhibits schizophrenic characteristics whilst Frey seems to be autistic. In the opening scene, she is enjoying a blissfully non-eventful Chinese takeaway with Frey and her fellow carer Josh, when she finds out that her beloved father and brother have died in a car crash. ⁣
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The story flicks between the idyllic time she spends in a gorgeous English cottage caring for Frey, her childhood - her mother’s negligence and obvious preference for her brother, her parents’ ugly divorce, and her brother’s illness rearing its head -, and her navigating grief with her distant mother. These are vividly written scenes and Callie’s rejection and desire to be loved are almost painful to witness, as are the brightness of her memories which she clings to amidst all this pain. In one flashback she describes it as ‘a moment of unguarded happiness. A treasure I can revisit, like going to a museum to marvel at a way of life once lived.’⁣⁣
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The book excels at unravelling Callie as a reliable narrator, and revealing the truths she keeps hidden from herself to survive, though there were elements of the writing that occasionally tipped over into over the top.
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#TheLeftovers #CassandraParkin

The novel is based around Callie who works as a live-in caregiver two weeks per month and then lives at home with her father the other two weeks per month caring for her mentally ill brother, Noah. During her two weeks on, she works together with Josh in providing 24-hour care for a young adult man, Frey, whose illness is never actually labeled. We learn that Frey is non-verbal, very routine-oriented, and has numerous issues with cleanliness and tactile issues such as touch (possibly somewhere on the Autism Spectrum). Callie's brother Noah is the life of the party that the entire family adores, but struggles determining reality from fantasy hears voices, creates people and situations that are not there (possibly Schizophrenia). Callie and Noah's parents have been divorced for many years and Callie has not had a relationship with her mother until there is a tragic accident and they are suddenly forced together. 

Told entirely from Callie's point of view, you come to realize that she isn't the most reliable narrator as the novel goes back and forth between her childhood, her life leading up to and then caring for Frey, and then the present. It doesn't take long to realize that things aren't right. There was emotional abuse when she was a child, a laundry list of family issues, and slowly we begin to see that Callie's quiet and caring nature is a bit off somehow. Despite knowing that things aren't right, there are some moments that were truly shocking and uncomfortable. Even worse, the ending is incredibly ambiguous, leaving you to wonder what comes next for Callie, Frey, and Josh. 

I gave this novel a 4-star rating on Amazon in spite of the uncomfortableness of the plot simply because of Parkin's writing. Whether it was an inward memory, a conversation between characters, or even an exchange of glances between characters - everything was so amazingly descriptive that I felt I was right there witnessing it in real-time. I was frustrated with a recent book that I read because at the end of the novel I realized I had no idea what the main character looked like. After reading this, I feel like I can see Callie's fingertips as she was passing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle to Frey. I can picture Noah sitting on the rooftop when anxious and hear Callie's calm, quiet voice trying to calm him. I can see Callie's mom dropping her hand at the zoo when Callie was small and trying to share her excitement with her mom, and I can feel her rejection. 

The Leftovers certainly won't leave you smiling with a warm and fuzzy feeling, but I feel that it's worth reading to experience Cassandra Parkin's way with words. She painted a picture from beginning to end that, although the picture wasn't a happy one, will stay with me for quite some time. 

*Thanks to NetGalley and Legend Press for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

This is a tricky book to encourage others to read as its subject matter means its not a light read. In fact, its a dark, uncomfortable read dealing as it does with the cycle of abuse.
It centres around Callie a former nurse now working as carer for Frey for two weeks every month; the other two weeks are spent caring for her brother Noah. Callie has no personal life to speak of and is a dedicated carer. Both Frey and Noah have mental health issues and rely on Callie. Following a car accident in which her beloved brother and father both die Callie is left to try and rebuild her relationship with her mother Vanessa. Callie has grown up believing that her mother didn’t love her and now questions her mother’s motivation and actions as they come to terms with the tragic accident. Family secrets are revealed and Callie has to deal with the fact that her childhood memories may not be as reliable as she thought they were. She also starts to question her emotions/behaviour and the impact its has on her ability to care effectively for Frey.
What I liked about this book was the vivid depiction of the central characters who I found to be empathetic, even frosty Vanessa. In addition, the mental health issues are never named or identified, we just see how they affect Noah and Frey as well as their families. I particularly liked the chapter where we heard Frey’s voice - he doesn’t communicate verbally so this chapter gave an insight into his world. His depiction of his time in the care home during lockdown is particularly topical and a damning indictment of the lack of real care the staff can give its residents.
More of this would have been welcome. Overall, this book was a tough but interesting read and powerfully showed the impact of parental neglect and how it can change a child’s life as well as the cycle of abuse.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read this.

This book is so much darker than I expected. it defiantly will not be for everyone. I found it hard to stomach at times but was ultimately worth it.

This is a very hard, dark and uncomfortable book. It was a hard, hard book to read and even harder to talk about. It's not going to be a book for everyone. In fact, I honestly don't know how many people are going to be able to read this at all. It's hard to stomach. It's about power and abuse and the cycle of abuse.

Cassandra Parkin is a powerful writer and supremely talented. I think that this book shows an immense future in literature.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I’ve read a couple of Cassandra Parkin’s books and I have more waiting on my TBR shelves. I was fortunate enough to interview her a few years ago when Underwater Breathing was published and she remains firmly on my radar. I am always interested to see what she’s up to! Her books are unusual and deceptive in her ability to take a situation and send it hurtling every which through your reader mind leaving you sometimes battered and bruised emotionally but with that satisfying feeling of having read a book of substance.

The Leftovers is a challenging read in that it explores themes of ‘sexual power and consent’ together with notions of love and friendship, and making choices. Pertinent topically, too, there’s reference to the effects of lockdown on residents of institutions. Also of consideration is the treatment of mental illness and the wider reaching effects on both sufferer and family. It’s dark in places, hard hitting but the threads of love tie it all together.

Callie is the narrator, fragile and flawed, yet caring and loving. She cares for her brother and she has a client, Frey, who she cares for too. A tragic event is the catalyst for Callie to recount and examine her past and its impact on her present. Ms. Parkin seems to have an intuitive ability to understand and create characters that both fulfil a role in the narrative but also present as complete people who step off the page and into the readers’ hearts. Frey just broke my heart! But for him to do that he needed a writer who could articulate, so effectively and movingly, an autistic mind and bring him to life. The novel is very much character driven, Callie’s family and her colleague Josh are the cement which keep the narrative flowing through all its tribulations. Josh is a lovely character, aways seeming positive and upbeat and his treatment of Frey is delightful in his ability to care without making a big deal out of it.

The book is a little like a roller coaster ride with peaks and troughs of unspeakable harshness and whimsical sequences of harmony and tenderness. Ultimately in spite of all that Callie goes through the conclusion, like life, is ambiguous. Some readers may find that off-putting if they are the kind of reader who wants all their ends neatly tied up but for others there is much to resonate for some time after you’ve finished the story.

My thanks to Legend Press and NetGalley for a gifted copy.

A book that drew me right in from the first pages.So well written characters that come alive a compelling read.A book that kept me reading late into the night.Lookingvfowardcto reading more by this author.#netgalley #theleftovers

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I loved this one. Very fast paced, had me turning pages as I tore through it – I had to see how it would end. The characters were well rounded and the narrative felt believable. Gave me chills. Solid five

*Book received from NetGalley in return for a review. This review may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author*

Trigger warnings for death of family members, sexual and emotional abuse, gaslighting and emotional manipulation, exploitation of people with disabilities.

Oh holy God, was this dark. I mean, I guess I should have got that from the book announcing itself to me as “A saga about power, consent, and the myth of the perfect victim.” Which is, to be fair, a reasonable description but also felt a bit unnecessary: let me decide what you’re about for myself, book.

In any case, it’s about that.

The protagonist, Callie Taggart, is a nurse and a residential career: she splits her time between caring for her father and mentally ill brother, Noah, and her client, Frey. Callie’s own family is deeply fractured, between Noah’s illness, her parents’ divorce, and Callie’s conviction that her mother doesn’t love her. When Noah and Callie’s father die in a car accident, this brings Callie back into proper contact with her mother for the first time in years. The story flows fluidly from the present (Callie staying with her mother, both of them dealing with their grief) to the near past (Callie’s current job, caring for Frey), the distant past (Callie’s childhood) and occasionally even into hypothetical or speculative scenarios where Callie attempts to reconstruct the accident or explore Frey’s experiences of the world.

This book hit me incredibly hard, and has haunted me since I read it, though I’m having a hard time knowing how to talk about it. But let me start with what drew me in. Although I should make clear I do not have standing to talk about fictional representations of people with disabilities: to me, however, it felt like the book gave Frey and Noah a lot freedom to be themselves, focused on allowing readers to understand their relationship to the world and the people in it (and the ways they have been failed by the world and the people in it, even those who love and care for them), and to present them as whole people with interiority, individuality and agency. For example, we’re never told the diagnosis for either of them: we are invited to view them as who they are, not as symptoms or a medical condition, and to adore Frey for his kindness, and his care, and Noah for his intelligence and charm. Of course, it’s also relevant that these perspectives come to us from Callie. For all her empathy and her willingness to speculate, to re-create, to dwell in hypothetical spaces, she is still the narrator of the novel. In that respect she has all the power of the story and this is especially relevant to Frey because it reminds us of the other power dynamics in play here (that of carer and client).

Ultimately this is a story of endless ambiguities, with cruelty and kindness, power and vulnerability, love and abuse, memory and madness, truth and lies, all hopelessly tumbled together. The control the book exercises over its own ambiguities, though, is absolutely masterful. For example, there’s a section in the middle where a relationship appears to be going to a very, very troubling place and I was increasingly concerned the book didn’t seem to be offering space to acknowledge that: but, thankfully, it did. And the way it did was one of the many emotional sucker punches The Leftovers has to offer. Fun times.

I wish I had a good conclusion here but I’m honestly still reeling a bit. This was bleak and powerful and utterly devastating. I think what make it possible to get through was the facility of the writing, along with the care and compassion of the character work. For all this is a story about abuse—the capacity we all have, perhaps, to become abusers ourselves even when we are victims—I did, in the end, find hope in it. We leave the heroine almost at a literal crossroads, a little freer than was at the beginning of the book, and armed with greater self-knowledge: I like to think she made the right choice. That abuse may feel like an endless cycle but that we also have the power, sometimes, to be selfless. And to make different choices than the ones that may have shaped us.

Callie Louise Taggart is a nurse, living two weeks at home caring for her brother Noah with the help of her father, and two weeks away caring for her client Frey Malmberg with co-carer Josh, and Floss the therapy dog. Chapters alternate much like her life does, offering illuminating flashbacks of the miserable childhood Callie blames her emotionally abusive mother for completely, and showing how she got her extremely lucrative job.

In the beginning I was caught up by the similarities between Callie and her boss, Frey's sister Linnea who monitors everything via secret camera from Stockholm; they're both children of divorce and fiercely protective sisters of severely disabled brothers. But then things shifted and I realized how much Callie and Frey have in common: how isolated they both are, that they've experienced hating things that their loved ones love, that they both feel responsible for their parents' divorces. The more I read, the more I loved this story, the mystery, the suspense, the drama, and ultimately the ending!

I love that we aren't given detailed physical descriptions of these characters and that I managed to read it before it (inevitably I'm sure) gets made into a film.

This one was all dark and twisty. It was obviously going to be dark and grief field and it delivered. It was both really fast paced and slow paced at the same time, with a lot of inner dialogue. This really came down to it being a character driven story. Callie and Vanessa were both complex characters and I had a love/hate relationship with both of them.

I just reviewed The Leftovers by Cassandra Parkin. #TheLeftovers #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

Wow. This is hard hitting from the very first few words and doesn't stop there. Incredibly thought provoking, masterful and poignant. Not an easy read at times, and I felt very emotionally invested in this. A wonderfully crafted character driven piece.

As someone with complex familial relationships i found this book incredibly poignant and hard hitting. Fast paced and very engrossing, Parkin builds complex and rounded characters that vividly come to life. A beautiful read

This is such a gem of a book the writing and the descriptions are so vividly clear and poignant. The characters are beautifully written the story is stunning I loved it

Thank you to Legend Press and NetGalley for this advanced copy. This story follows Callie, a carer in every sense of the word. Alongside her father she cares for her brother, Noah, as he battles mental illness, and she also works as a carer for Frey, a grown man with his own mental disabilities. When Callie's father and brother are killed in a car accident, she's left alone with the one person she never wanted to be alone with - her mother. The book bounces back and forth between the present day grief she faces in her loss, and what lead to her awful relationship with her mother.

This book was definitely a character driven novel in which the author carefully painted the picture of each of the main characters. By the end, I could vividly picture them all in my mind. I loved getting to know them. And I especially loved the relationships between Callie and Noah and Callie and Frey. I found Frey's character especially interesting and would've loved to spend more time in his world.

Near the end there was a relationship that was beginning to form that made me irrationally angry to the point that I almost stopped reading, but by the end, I realized why it had been included. And though I still didn't like it, it all made sense.

All in all, this was a great story. Parkin did an incredible job building these characters until I, too, cared a lot about them.

(This book will be talked about on "Reading Through Life" podcast on October 6, 2021.)

Thank you Legend Press , NetGalley and Author for this advance ebook copy in return for an honest review!

WoW The Leftovers by Parkin is absolutely an amazing, heartbreaking story!
This is such a fast paced, compelling read, I relished every moment!
With its excellent plot and comfortable pacing, I had difficulty putting this book down between chapters!
Prodigious character portrayal and darkness is well-maintained throughout the story I wanted to finish this book at 2am to see how this book ended!
5 stars very well deserved here!

Thanks again NetGalley, Publisher and Author for the chance to read and review this amazing book!
I'll post to my Social media platforms closer to pub date!

I loved this book. I particularly liked the story but identified with great characters. I couldn’t wait to find out the end and wasn’t disappointed.