My Last Innocent Year is a coming-of-age, character-driven novel set in 1998 at the prestigious Wilder College in New Hampshire. Isabel (Izzy) Rosen is a Jewish college student in her final year when she has a non-consensual sexual encounter with a friend and later on an affair with her decades older, married English professor. The only child of a widowed father who owns an appetizing store on the Lower East Side in NYC, she has struggled to fit in with her wealthy classmates. Izzy is on the cusp of adulthood, trying to decide what she wants out of life and who she wants to be.

This short novel tackles themes of consent, identity, abuse, mental illness and power dynamics. Though most of the story flashes between Isabel’s childhood and college years, we are also given glimpses of the future as the narrator will interrupt the story as if we’re sitting in a room with her decades later listening to her speak nostalgically of her early 20s.

Overall I enjoyed reading this, I loved the writing style and thought the story flowed gracefully. Though at times I did find Isabel’s passivity to be frustrating, and having finished the book I still don’t know how to interpret her lack of emotion. I wished I could grab her shoulders and beg her to care deeply about something, anything, especially with what takes place in the first chapter.
I initially thought this book would be similar to My Dark Vanessa, but it was not at all. Whereas MDV solely focuses on a teacher/student relationship, this is only one part of Isabel’s story. Though I had mixed emotions about how the events at the beginning were handled, by the end of the novel I was satisfied with how everything was tied up. I hope to read more from this author in the future.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

My Last Innocent Year follows Isabel Rosen during her senior year at Wilder College in 1998 New Hampshire. Following the untimely death of her mother and a nonconsensual sexual encounter with a peer, Isabel enters an affair with her married writing professor.

There were two aspects of this book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The first was the writing, which has that air of academia about it without all the pretention of someone who's trying to write a book with an academic feel. The writing, and its close focus on character, made it abundantly clear to me early on that Florin is the kind of author who zeroes in on honing their craft at the most granular level.

The other aspect that I enjoyed, as this is something of a coming-of-age narrative, and it is certainly primarily character driven, was the way in which the narration was framed from the perspective of Future Isabel. We are not reading Isabel's story as it happens, but rather we are listening to her retell it, and while the story may be the same regardless, this viewpoint allowed us to watch Isabel reflect on the future implications of events from a more mature place even as they happened, which for me contributed significantly to my understanding of and belief in her character.

That said, as this is a very Literary Character Driven book, some readers are going to find it pretty boring. Despite the affair, and the kidnapping subplot, there's not a lot that happens in this book that would be considered particularly eventful, and even the ending is marked by the soft potential for character growth at the closing of an expired narrative thread.

Daisy Alpert Florin's novel, My Last Innocent Year, follows Isabel Rosen as she navigates her senior of college: a sexual assault, mental health, and an affair with her professor, all while trying to figure out what life after college looks like for her. Florin's debut is My Dark Vanessa meets The Idiot and invites us into the lives of the English students at a small, elite university in New England.

Florin is a wonderful storyteller, her tale woven with foreshadowing by placing it against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. Like the political scandal, Isabel's relationship with her professor is based on a power dynamic and lies are continuously spewing from the man's mouth.

Even the side characters in Florin's novel are tangible. Debra, Isabel's roommate and best friend, is my personal favorite character. A radical feminist during the late 1990s, Debra takes it into her own hands to make sure that the students, faculty, and staff at her university know, without a doubt, that "womyn are everywhere".

As a former English major myself, I found Isabel's story intriguing and well-placed, and am incredibly impressed that this is Florin's debut. I am anxiously awaiting more from her in the future.

I think I was hoping for a powerful female and raw emotional journey out of this book and that is not what I got.

This book deals with a lot of heavy issues like rape, stealing, and a student/professor sexual relationship. I felt like we were following Isabel through all of these event during her time in college, but she seemed kinda blah about it all. I would have loved more of a perspective from her after college looking back on the events. There is beauty in realization and wanting change. It was mostly her remembering Connelly while writing.

I didn't have all the feelings in this book as a reader, but enjoyed from a strictly storytelling way.

Thank you to Henry Holt and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this ARC for my honest review.

This is an incredibly beautifully written and poignant story. The pacing was a bit slow at times, but that didn’t impact how enraptured I was by Isabel’s experiences and dilemmas. As someone who is close to Isabel’s age, the social context really resonated and I appreciated that the author wasn’t afraid to take chances and go to some dark places – be advised, the title is quite apt. If you like character-driven novels or are a fan of Sally Rooney’s writing you may really enjoy this one!

I found this novel difficult to fully get into, but towards the 75% mark I became enraptured. The first part of the book was in no means bad, the writing is striking and Isabel’s narrative is poignant and haunting. However at many points this book felt like I was staring at a work of art in that I could see the craftsmanship and appreciate the skill of the creator, but I didn’t really connect to it in any way. This didn’t make the reflections of the book any less fervent, it just prolonged my process of reaching them as I wasn’t immediately hooked.

It didn't feel very cohesive to be honest. I didn't connect with any of the characters and it all felt a bit juvenile. Maybe I would have liked it more like 10 years ago?

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

I feel like Sally Rooney lovers and anyone who enjoys 1990s culture and academia will really enjoy this!

Isabel is a senior in college who finds herself with a steamy and tumultuous affair with her professor. You learn she’s lost her Artist, free spirited mother, her dad never seems to be proud of her, and she’s just trying to write compelling and memorable stories.

This goes to dark places. Trust the title! It’s a coming of age, loss of innocence story that is very well done.

Very reminiscent of Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songridej. If you like that one you’ll like this!

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co Publishing for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a coming of age story focused on the life of a college student. That feels very strange to say. I don’t see the senior year college student as the “coming of age” age. For a college student, she seems very young. Maybe I’m forgetting what it’s like to be a college student, perhaps I just don’t even know what it was truly like to be in her shoes. It seems that a better age would be a high school senior and not a college senior.

Anyway, I did not really enjoy this book. I believe people who enjoy a younger and less mature protagonist will enjoy this book. It just missed the mark for me.

This book is out February 14th, 2023.

This one was a miss for me - it tried to do too much. I didn’t find the characters likeable enough to feel infested in what happened to them - and a lot happens! Set in a college (usually a winner for me - I love college settings), this plot is all over the place. If the author would have chose even two to delve into, the novel would have been so much more satisfying. Great ideas - but the execration fell short for me. Thanks to Henry Holt for the copy. I’m grateful.

This book is like a stroll in the park with a old college friend on a brisk fall morning. The narrative is in real time but it feels like a memory. This is going to feel too slow for some readers but I really enjoyed it. Altogether a solid, pleasant, entertaining 3.75 star read :)

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

I very much enjoyed reading this complicated story about a girl's coming of age in her senior year of college. Set in the 1990's, Isabel Rosen is still mourning her mother's death when she has a nonconsensual encounter with another student. Then Isabel's professor shows an interest in her that leads to an affair and her world is sent into a spin. Set at the same time as the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, author Daisy Alper Florin does a beautiful job of conveying the feeling of a young girl at this tumultuous time. in her life. Though this book may not be for all readers - I raced through it and found it fascinating.

Haunting and raw, My Last Innocent Year explores consent and what it means to “grow up” blurring lines along the way. The writing is achingly beautiful leaving me with a handful of quotes woven into my memory. A true masterpiece debut.

My Last Innocent Year was a really strong debut that I wanted to push a little further. I feel like it just scratched the surface especially when it came to the student/teacher relationship and I wanted more. While I liked the epilogue, I feel like the end of her school year wrapped up really quickly—would have been nice to have had one more confrontation between Isabel and Connelly.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked the setting (mostly at a college), and the timeline. The writing flowed from 90s, past and present. And it wasn’t confusing, the jumping back and forth, sometimes it can be. She took us through time and it was beautifully written. It just flows. The story itself just needed more plot. It’s very character driven. It’s a story of a girl’s last year in college. It’s like she’s in the room with you and telling you about it and then she adds in what she feels about it now or what she learned later on, and that I loved. This is a debut and I’ll definitely be looking for her next book.

It felt like this wanted to be a character study, no plot just vibes kind of novel - but it never went deep enough into the protagonists psyche to make it there. It kept me in the story well enough that I blew through it, but it was more like I was floating above it that actually grabbed & kept there. It feels like it is just on the precipice of something, but lacked the emotional punch it seemed to promise.

This book is raw and real! I like the voice of Isabel because she is so confused and unsure about so much which is so relatable for a college aged protagonist. Especially on the cusp of graduating and needing to make tough decisions about what is realistic and what is a fantasy. Exploring some of the more serious sexual themes was also refreshing. While not a major theme, sexual assault doesn’t always look like they tell you on the news. There’s a quiet resignation that goes on in so many sexual situations where women simply don’t say no…but they’re not saying yes either. Absolutely loved the way Daisy navigates that.

This was difficult and powerful to read. I saw some people mention the main character's unlikability, but that speaks a lot to the annoying nature of society to need women to be these pure, flawless, "perfect" victims before they're worth empathizing with (which sucks). This book excellently shows that unfortunate reality, even through fiction -- just read the reviews.

I loved this, and found it moving but also really hard to read at times. Mistakes and bad choices (on our ends, or other people's ends that end up impacting us) during our youth will often come back to haunt us later in various ways, and a duel timeline is one of my favorite plot devices to convey/show growth or change over time. Will definitely be checking out more from the author.

One of the main critiques I've been seeing for this book is that the main character, Isabel, is unlikeable and hard to empathize with. I think that it was actually really easy to empathize with her, because I feel like the decisions we make in our early 20s are not always the best. A lot of our choices from this period of time come back to haunt us later in life, and I love how the author allowed us to see Isabel in the future and see how these choices affected her life post-college and how she grew from her experiences. I loved how Isabel often had to grapple with her own desire versus doing the right thing, and it made the story that much more compelling and true to life for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I thought it was an interesting and intimate coming of age story that deals with many difficult topics, such as consent and domestic violence, in a sensitive way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for the e-ARC.

Beautifully written, but the MC was hard to like and root for. Many hard topics - be sure to check trigger warnings. Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for an early read.