My Last Innocent Year is a coming-of-age novel that tackles the difficulties of growing up and a young woman's task of finding her place in society.. The author does an awesome job of capturing a young woman struggling to find herself., but I was expecting a romance, a love story. but this is not one, at least not in the traditional sense.. Overall, I felt that this book had a powerful message, but it is not a book you look for for plot. It is, at it's best, a book about girls with feelings.
There is SA in this book as well as the sexual manipulation-abuse of a young girl, so if these things are triggers to you then it may be best to skip this one

Thank you so much to NetGalley for allowing me early access to this title in exchange for an honest review.

I cannot stop thinking about this book- it was one of those that once I picked it up, I didnt want to put down at all. I loved that we were looking back on the experience and also seeing Isabel learn how those experiences shaped her- not in a cheesy way but in a deeply insightful way. Definitely deals with a lot of heavy subjects but I could easily read this book over and over again.

Definitely not a light read so beware.

But, it does show how people get sucked into a thing they think they want until they realize the reality of it all.

Also, consent is key. A valuable lesson that should be known everywhere.

For fans of coming-of-age novels with a dark academia vibe. Trigger warning for sexual relations between an older man in a position of power and a young impressionable woman of age.

"Especially when I thought about Zev and the way he pressed his fingers into my flesh like wet clay, the slick of his tongue in my ear, the way he'd rummaged around inside me like a bag of old clothes."


Rating: 4 Stars

I absolutely loved how Daisy Alpert Florin navigated Isabel's journey from early adulthood. She gives just enough of the backstory to get a glimpse as to why Isabel may be making some fairly sketchy choices. As the novel progresses later into Isabel's life you see how her choice to have an affair with her Professor impacted and continued to impact her life and choices. It's dark without getting too gross. This novel does an excellent job demonstrating sexual coercion in a scenario many women have found themselves in and often end up feeling exactly how the author depicted Isabel.

"I'd wondered what he might say when we were finally alone, if he would kiss me again or tell me it had all been a mistake; now I worried he wouldn't say anything at all."

Review posted at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4875365796

Drawn to it because of the comparison to the brilliant My Dark Vanessa, MLIY starts with a different premise, in a not so distant past where the social commentary about the Lewinsky affair sprinkles doubt and turmoil in our protagonist. A lost soul in college, stuck between 2 polar opposite friends, she finds her solace in her professor, who delights in singling out favorite pupils for his own pleasure. Whereas MDV gave us an incisive and intimate account of the protagonist’s mental state, MLIY is passive in the way you can only expect a lost college student to be - and it excels at it. You want to shake her and make her see the light, the way her friends manipulate her views of the world, how her affair is nothing more than another check on the list of her lover, but most importantly in today’s day and age: the importance of NO in all aspects of life.

All in all a 4/5: the “bleh” college student mindset makes some of the reading difficult, but the punches are there when needed. Thanks for the ARC!!!

arc from netgalley and Henry Holt and Co.

Content warnings for sexual assault/nonconsent, domestic violence, death, and suicide

It’s hard to describe the plot of this book, but it essentially covers a female student’s final semester of college, including a nonconsensual sexual encounter, an affair with a professor, her father and his appetizing store in the Lower East Side, and a lot of flashbacks to the author’s upbringing.

I thought this was written very well. The author handles time beautifully and with such care, zooming in and out on certain moments, bringing us into the characters’ futures and then back into the moment. I loved the way she wrote about writing and creating—this feels like an area in which the narrator truly learned and grew throughout the novel.

All that said, I don’t think this should be advertised as a book that tackles consent. The encounter at the beginning of the book feels separate from the rest of the novel, and both the encounter and the idea of consent are only brought up briefly a couple more times throughout the rest of the book. We did not arrive at a new perspective on consent; it just felt like the narrator was recounting a thing that happened to her and that she moved on from. This book was strange in that it seems a lot of life-altering things are happening but are just bouncing off the narrator. I didn’t get a sense of how she felt or how she was being impacted.

Midway through the book, all of the plot lines and the things that were being addressed started to feel like they belonged in different stories, but the author wove them all beautifully together at the end. Aside from the theme of consent, an important topic that did not come through here or fit in with the rest of the book, this was a really cohesive and beautiful coming-of-age.

4.5 rounded up. Beautifully written, and although it deals with darker subjects (nonconsensual sex, sleeping with a professor) it isn't insanely depressing. However, this is not a light summer beach read that you idly flip through while sipping on a spiked seltzer.

You definitely have to be in the right mindset to enjoy reading it. This is a book you read before you get your period when you want to feel all the feels. Daisy Alpert Florin has written it so that you find yourself inside Daisy's mind and being able to understand what is going on inside her heart.

I love the way she describes Connelly, her writing professor, even though the relationship is clearly not ideal. "Connolly was wearing blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt with a bleach stain by the heart. I realized as I walked toward him that I never looked at anyone as much as I'd looked at him. If I were an artist, I could've painted him from memory: each wave of hair the contour of his knuckles. He was still the most beautiful man I've ever seen."

I think that this passage really does a good job of getting to what the book is really about: "We were girls in the bodies of women. We bought condoms with our father's credit cards, drink sloe gin fizzes, and slept with stuffed animals on our beds we didn't know how to fold a fitted sheet." The book is primarily about still having the mindset of a girl, but being in the body of a woman and how men interact with that body. The path that Isabel follows is simultaneously fascinating and gutwrenching.

This quote from the book did a solid job of describing how I felt when I was done with it: "I let the image hang there, pressed on the bruise of it, coaxing out the ancient ache. When I was done, I felt different, not lighter, just hollow, as if someone had scooped out my insides, leaving only a shell one flick and I would crack."

The language in the book is just delicious. Read it! Just not at the beach.

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of #mylastinnocentyear

Thank you to Netgalley and Henry Holt for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
TW: sexual assault, domestic violence, death of a parent, suicide
It took me a while to read this book. While the prose captured my attention from the first couple of chapters, the story really doesn't take off until a little under 50%. Regardless, this was a beautifully written, well-developed story. Every single word of this novel was not only intentional but carefully placed.
The synopsis for My Last Innocent Year does not even scratch the surface of what this book is about. The writing is as if the main character, Isabel, is reflecting on her last year of college from an adult perspective. I found Isabel's narrative to be captivating and essential to the themes of this novel.
In her senior year, Isabel should be relishing her last few months of girlhood-her life revolving around her friends and campus life, not having to worry about finances, a career, and the daunting aspects of adulthood. After Isabel is sexually assaulted by a classmate, she finds herself stuck in the limbo between girlhood and womanhood. Isabel experiences the beauty of first love as she begins an affair with a her married professor as she witnesses the downfall of the toxic marriage of two professors in her department. This transition occurs amidst the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal which opens Isabel's eyes to how beautiful women are treated American culture.
This is a breathtaking coming of age story about the beautiful, yet bitter, transition to womanhood. I am grateful to have received an advanced copy of this novel as I know it is a story I will continue to think about in the future. I look forward to reading this author's future work!

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I am incredibly glad that I got the chance to read My Last Innocent Year. This was an attention-holding, relatable and vivid story of a college girl’s tumultuous last semester following a sexual encounter that was less than consensual. She seeks refuge in a male writing professor, and I appreciated the way that their connection was established and played out. The author did an excellent job creating the world of fictional Wilder College and the intricacies of its English department, as well as creating a protagonist to understand and root for. The perspective (told from adulthood, providing occasional glimpses into the future beyond the Clinton-era setting of most of the text) allows the protagonist introspection that I certainly didn’t have in college. It might remind me most of Elif Batuman’s brilliant “The Idiot,” with more down-to-Earth protagonist, and I found myself reluctant to put it down until I was finished. Highly recommend!

My Last Innocent Year” is a fantastic debut novel by Daisy Alpert Florin. We meet Isabel (Izzy) who is in her final year at Wilder College, a prestigious college in New Hampshire. She lost her mother, who was a painter, to cancer, and her father owns a Jewish appetizer store in New York City and has very little money. About to embark on “the real world,” an acquaintance forces her to have sex—whether the fact was rape is something the novel dances around. Still raw from the experience, she enters into a relationship with her Fiction Workshop (and married) professor. But can he be the one to save her or will Izzy learn to save herself?

The author does an awesome job of capturing a young woman struggling to find herself. Izzy, for the most part, was a likeable character (though I may have related because I was also a fiction writer who faced the conclusion of the end of college without any idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up.) The scenes describing the workshopping process—and having your work dissected—brought back a few nightmares, especially when Professor Connelly (Randy) used his love of Izzy’s work as a way to seduce her. I found Randy (a disenfranchised poet) somewhat suspect—he should have known better to enter into a relationship with a fragile student who was reeling from a negative sexual encounter. Also, I liked the author’s use of the setting of a smaller Eastern college. Because the plot was set in the late nineties, the reader (almost heavy-handedly) references the impact of Bill Clinton’s inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky, yet expects readers to make their own conclusions. There are moments in the novel where the author (in her fictional present) reflects back to her past. I would have preferred the author to have stayed in her moments of vulnerability.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to give this novel an early read.

I’m always drawn to this type of story about a young woman in college, because I think that is a pivotal journey and find these to be transformative years. Usually I end up disappointed because the main character is not developed convincingly or is represented as a woman without any power or control of her life. Isabel, however, was complex yet relatable. I was glad that even though some of her decisions were questionable, she ended up claiming her power back. She did not play the role of victim. Enjoyed it!

2.5 STARS

My Last Innocent Year is a novel with very triggering content and I feel like this novel lacks proper storytelling and character opinions and feelings. I found the relationships to be very superficial and most of the character storylines to be uninteresting. This book had potential to be great, but it was just not my cup of tea.

Something kept me reading this one, even though it was disturbing at times. I wanted a bit more of the character's feelings, but maybe that was the point. I found the MC a bit frustrating because I didn't always understand her. I think I just wanted more of the character's emotions, thoughts, and feelings in response to the many traumatizing events that take place in this book.

The book was lacking in plot, which is fine, but that means I need more character and relationship development to enjoy and I just didn't feel like I got that.

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin is a coming-of-age novel that tackles the difficulties of growing up and a young woman's task of finding her place in society. Wonderfully written, readers will find themselves on a journey with Isabel, a college student tasked with fitting in as a minority and coming from a life she feels has betrayed her.

The historical context of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal provided a nice backdrop for Isabel's own affair, and how that shaped her young mind (just as what happened to Lewinsky). This was a subtle touch, and the presidential affair was not heavily mentioned, but I think that was nice; this story was about Isabel and her experiences. Nonetheless, the comparison shed light on how quickly a young woman can be defined by experience with a man, whether she knows it or not.

This book also explored the tumult of friendship - how it can leave one wondering where loyalties lie and just what should reasonably expected out of friendship.

While fiction, the novel implicitly shares invaluable lessons applicable to all ages and, all women. I am rating 4 - 4.5 stars because I do not see myself rereading at this time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt for this advanced copy.

MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR is a novel about a girl, Isabel, who has an affair with her writing professor (a has-been, briefly famous poet) after having an ambiguous sexual encounter with another Jewish classmate in her final year of college. Meanwhile, the head of the english department and her husband (also a member of the English department) are undergoing a messy divorce.

This book hopes to tackle questions of consent (whether a college student and a professor can have a consensual relationship), jewishness (Isabel's father owns an appetizing store in the LES of Manhattan, but is not particularly devout), and trauma (Isabel's mother died after a prolonged bout with cancer), In it's main relationship the most obvious comparison novel is MY DARK VANESSA, and the relationships are, at least superficially, similar.

But MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR suffers from a timidity problem. While MY DARK VANESSA takes place in a high school classroom, MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR occurs in a senior year application-based seminar at an elite liberal arts institution, and yet the literary repartee is scant and unconvincing. Though they have sex, any exploration of it is entirely absent, the physical relationship between the two almost completely undescribed. More troublingly, however, refusal to answer the questions it brings up, with prose I often found overblown, cliched, and saccharine. The Jewish storyline is interesting, but it doesn't feel vital to the story the way I wish it was; there are so many ideas about Jewishness and her relationship with Lev that could have been explored moreso than just ancestors "leaving Russia" and Lev vaguely "serving in the army". Another tic: Florin uses prolepsis an awful lot, but it doesn't have much use in the end.

If you're looking for the collegiate answer to MY DARK VANESSA, unfortunately, this novel isn't it.

This book’s about a young woman, Daisy, in her last year at college in the 90s.

I loved it book and enjoyed reading it. It went by quickly.
Loved the gender, class, religion and mental health components.
I think the only thing that was missing, for me, was a race component. This wasn’t a very diverse cast of characters. Perhaps that was intentional as the school is based in the North East at a private university.

I also loved the consent component. I liked that this was set concurrently with the Lewinsky drama of the 90s. I thought the scene in the bar with Daisy’s frat friends seemed particularly real and believable. What’s interesting is that the professor is clearly an absolute psycho perv. But because Daisy refers to him with such admiration and desire, I didn’t pick up on that until the end.

Lastly, I normally hate reading about hard things (rape) but this was handled so nicely.

Billed as a coming of age story set in the late 1990's amid the breaking of the Clinton sex scandal, My Last Innocent Year is an unexpected meditation on that murky time period between childhood and full-blown adulthood, on the choices we make during that liminal state and the unexpected impact those choices have on the rest of our lives, and on the different ways we view ourselves and our choices in that time when we look back on them as a much older person.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book!

THANK YOU NETGALLEY for giving me the chance to read this.
i? honestly do not know where to begin. It started out kind of boring for me (mostly because I'm reading instead of studying so i wanted something that made me forget that.) But anyway, as it went on, it kept getting so much more interesting and i think it's definitely worth a read (and a reread sometime in the future). here's to writers honestly, you guys deserve the world(s) <3

I found the book to be one of the best “coming of age” stories I’ve read in a long time. While it does not follow the main character, Izzy’s, full life per se, we are taken through her final year of college where she goes from kid to adult. The way the author described the emotions of a woman going through that specific time in her life was so spot on, even though this book was placed in the late 90s. While Izzy’s affair with her professor is a main storyline, I found there was so much more going on that made this story so well-rounded. I was a very big fan of this book!

If you enjoyed Writers & Lovers by Lily King you will enjoy this novel.

NetGalley ARC - thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really adored this book. The writing is beautiful and smart, the voice is compelling, and the story is both familiar and unique. I don't tend to love stories about cishet people "coming of age" in academia, but this one really surprised me. The narrator's distance from her peers because of her class and religion felt meaningful and well-illustrated, and the dark look into the lives of faculty on the campus added a nice dimensionality I think is often lost in campus "love" stories, especially between students and professors. Overall I was really impressed with this strong, quiet voice, and would recommend this read to everyone.