Patti Callahan Henry is an automatic read for me - and this did not disappoint! This lit-fic takes readers on an explorative journey across the world, with romance, discovery, and mystery! I loved the characters and the storyline and the way everything played out.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Patti Callahan Henry is a fabulous writer who uses prose and lyrical style to tell her stories. The Story She Left Behind is the tale of a family and the mystery of a disappearance. Henry weaves the mystery around these characters and the search for her mother who disappeared unexpectedly twenty five years ago.
Imagine a little girl waking up to find her mother has gone, never to return. Her life is consumed with the loss and wondering why her dear mother left. Now that little girl is grown up with a daughter of her own. A call out of no where brings this loss front and center once again. And she cannot get past that.
Imagine also a child prodigy who publishes her one and only book at age twelve. While that is a fabulous accomplishment, it leaves her lost as she grows up, marries, and has a child. After a series of unfortunate incidents, she decides she must disappear for the good of her family.
While I have always enjoyed Henry's writing and other novels, this story did not hold up.

I am a huge fan of Henry's Once Upon a Wardrobe and Becoming Mrs. Lewis. However, her last two published books have hit the mark for me. I disliked the main character and found the writing formulaic and subpar.
I would give this one a pass.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to preview this book.

“Sometimes the world isn’t so kind to people who are different, especially women.” And, “For there is no moving forward or change without loss.”

I fell in love with Patti’s Callahan Henry’s lyrical writing style with The Secret Book of Flora Lea and was delighted to read her most recent novel with the same enchanting storytelling!

Both Clara Charlie struggle with the pressure of family legacy. This, along with descriptive scenes, was my favorite part of the novel. However, I admit I was intrigued with the mystery as well.

In addition, I grew up with a mother that was strong but maybe didn’t meet the societal norms for compassion, so I appreciated the struggle that Clara faced with her own mother. The message of understanding and forgiveness is front and center here.

Additionally, found family is a favorite theme of mine, and I loved how both Clara and Charlie experienced this. Plus the delight of Christmas sprinkled throughout made this book so endearing and magical!

Last but not least, I only know a little about the Great Smog of London and liked that vivid addition as well as the real life story that inspired this novel. The weaving of various elements into this story is incredible.

Again, this is not a fast-paced book, but if you love historical fiction and gorgeous writing, you need to pick this one up. It is available now!

Thank you to @netgalley and @atria for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC of Patti Callahan Henry’s The Story She Left Behind. I was entranced by this lovely story filled with intrigue, mystery, love and forgiveness. Set in London, during the great fog of 1952, Claire begins a search to uncover the details of her abandonment as a young child by her mother. Her delightful young daughter Wynnie accompanies her on this incredible journey.
A great finale. 4 stars

Patti Callahan Henry has done it again!
I love Patti’s writing. Her lyrical prose draws us right in to her settings in this book. From Bluffton SC to London England to The Lake District of England!
This story of love, loss with a bit of mystery is inspired by the true story of a child prodigy author who goes missing leaving her family behind along with a manuscript written in her own made up language.
Years later, her daughter, hears from a man in England that her mother’s dictionary has been found. She must go to retrieve it in person.
Enjoyed this story with its surprises and the growth of the characters.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for an early read!

For 25 years Clara has been trying to understand what made her mother disappear one night from their South Carolina home. Why did she leave? Is she still alive? And where is her mother’s invented language? When she gets a phone call from a stranger in England, claiming to have some papers that can only be delivered to her in person, she decides to take the risk and go retrieve them. Bringing her daughter along they unfortunately arrive during the famous Great Smog and have to navigate the perils of an unknown city in it’s own crisis as well as trying to understand what happened to her mother all those years ago.

Unfortunately, this one was a disappointment to me. While I have read a few books by Patti Callahan Henry and enjoyed them, this one was lacking for me.
A few things she did well. Her prose were, as always, beautiful and lyrical. The settings were characters unto themselves and could very clearly be visualized. When they were struggling through the Great Smog in London, I felt like I too was having difficulty breathing. If you have never visited the Lake District, this book will have you searching for tickets. The mystery and intrigue kept my attention, and I wanted to know how it would end.

However, I struggled with the pace of this book. At times I felt like we were living the whole 25 years of her mother’s disappearance, but in reality only 10 days had passed. There was a lot of introspection, deep thinking, wondering, internal questioning, etc. that just made it feel long instead of progressing the story. And for a story about a daughter trying to reconnect with any part of her mother she could find, we really didn’t need the odd insta romance.

This one has already been published, so if you’re interested you can go ahead and get it at your favorite book buying location!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my review.
#NetGalley #TheStorySheLeftBehind

Don't be left behind in checking out Patti Callahan Henry's latest read. The multi-generational story transports readers from South Carolina to the UK's picturesque Lake District. Clara Harrington's young life forever changed when her mother disappeared. Her enduring legacy sets a foundation for Clara to become an illustrator.

When Clara wins a Caldecott, the prize unlocks her desire to bridge her past with the present. A phone call from across the pond depicts a bequest that commences Clara and her daughter's journey to discover her mother through lost letters and secret language. The voyage awakens memories that Clara buried and she's forced to confront her family's ghost in the unlikeliness of places. Will the truth set her free or unlock more questions?

An emotional journey in post WWII England has a woman and her young asthmatic daughter searching for meaning and connection to their mother/grandmother's work. I really enjoyed this latest from Patti Callahan Henry, it had romance, mystery, family secrets, mental health rep and was a great look at life in pre-war England and the deadly fogs just after the war too. Recommended for fans of authors like Kelly Rimmer, good on audio and as always, included a great author's note and list of further reading resources at the end. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thanks to NetGalley for the free advance copy of The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry in exchange for an honest review. It’s out now, so you can - and should - go get it!

Patti Callahan Henry’s lovely novel The Story She Left Behind is set in 1952 and centers on Clara, a talented illustrator of children’s books, and her precocious daughter Winnie, living in Clara’s childhood South Carolina home. Abandoned by her mother Bronwyn, a famous author, when she was small, Clara gets a surprising phone call from a man named Charlie, living in London, who finds her mother’s presumably lost papers in his recently deceased father’s library - and with them, a letter for Clara saying she must retrieve the papers in person. Clara travels with Winnie and lands just as the terrible Great Smog arrives - endangering asthmatic Winnie with its deadly fumes. The rest of the story follows Clara, Winnie and Charlie to the countryside of England’s Lake District where they search for answers to the deepening mystery of the papers, along with Clara’s frantic need to know what happened to her mother all those years ago.

A lyrical and evocative novel, themes include the intersection of the arts and mental illness, and the need we all have to express our creativity freely.

Four stars.

Patti Callahan Henry's new novel "The Story She Left Behind" engaged me right away as Henry creates characters you care about and always does a great job of making the reader feel and see the locale and space as well.

This novel is about family loss and the wounds we can inflict, even when trying to protect our loved ones. Clara and Wynnie are compelling characters as you would expect of lead characters, and also Henry does a great job of making us care about all of the surrounding and supporting characters.

The Story She Left Behind was a great read!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It is available now, and it's on the NYT bestseller list too!

Clara goes to England to collect papers her missing mother has left to her and maybe find some answers about what happened to her mother 25 years earlier. Bronwyn was a famous author who also created her own language to convey her deeper thoughts and feelings. This story has similar elements that were in the author’s previous book, The Secret Book of Flora Lea- gorgeous descriptions of the English countryside, a book about a magical imaginary world, and a captivating family mystery to be solved. This author has such a talent for writing beautiful phrases to describe things. If you just read her work for that reason alone, it’s worth it. Her writing encourages us to dare to believe in things unseen and magical. I enjoyed this story and the characters felt very real. Bronwyn’s character was inspired by a real woman which made it even more interesting.
I also loved discovering the new words that Bronwyn created. I’m still looking for my parthanium.
I received my copy from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

I have read Patti Callahan Henry's books for many years, and she just keeps getting better! I loved The Story She Left Behind. My heart hurt for Clara whose mother had abandoned her as a child. When Clara, now an adult with her own daughter, receives information that could be a clue about her mother's disappearance, she feels compelled to act on the possible clue. She and her daughter take a ship to London, arriving just as London experiences the Great Smog of 1952. This is such a good story, and Patti Callahan's writing is just perfection! I have no doubt this will be one of my favorite books of 2025!

I particularly love novels where characters are storytellers themselves: In this one, Clara Harrington is a children’s book illustrator in the early 1950s. Driven to solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance, she brings her daughter Winnie with her to England. They make their journey from the center of London’s Great Smog to the countryside to discover Clara’s mother’s hidden secrets. (Recommendation will be sent to subscribers of WordSmarts email newsletter)

The Story She Left Behind will have you captivated from the first page. I could not stop turning the pages. This is inspired by a true literary mystery and it follows a woman who is looking for her mother. The author did a wonderful job writing this and I can not wait to read more books from this author. Every character in this was great. This is historical fiction, mystery and so much more. It was such an enchanting read. I loved this one so very much and would recommend to any reader especially to those who loves historical fiction. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this read in exchange of my honest review of The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry.

Patti Callahan Henry may be one of my new favorite authors. This is the second of her books that I have read (she has written 18!) and I loved it more than the first (which was a favorite).

This book is historical fiction written so beautifully - a magical quality that takes you to another place and time! This book to me was a love story of a family and while it takes 25 years to fully understand the love story - it is a journey we have to take.

The characters are wonderfully written - not perfect in any way but you understand and want them to heal. The countryside is fairy like, and I want to live there always.

The writing is beautiful, the telling poetic and the whole experience one I want to live again and again!!

 
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story. I thought that the characters were well fleshed out, and enjoyed Clara's quest to find out what happened to her mother. I appreciated the inclusion of a historical event that I had not heard of before in the Great Smog, and thought setting it up so that Wynnie had asthma and needed to escape made sense, though based on the blurb I had expected more of the story to focus on that piece. The descriptions of the idyllic countryside made me want to go there. The slow-growing affection between Clara and Charlie was sweet and satisfying. Overall, an excellent book.

I enjoyed this story. It was very "Nora Roberts"-like; fantasy in the real world. I loved the little girl's character. I also loved the decades long family drama. This was a light-hearted story with a bit of mystery and a happy ending.

3.5 stars:

I loved the last book written by this author and was excited to dive into this one. I knew the writing would be beautiful and I love the female narrator so I was all set to love the book. In the end I feel very unsettled, and very sorry for almost every character in this story. Everyone lost something or someone, and everyone is looking for answers of some kind. While the story does have beauty to it, I’m left with a feeling of lingering sadness that I can’t shake.

“I believe we’ve all wondered about living different lives, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love the one we have.”

A young girl writes a story at eight years old that captivates the world. Her life is complex and so sad, but she has her own little girl Clara. The story becomes Clara’s, from her eighth year and on, and after her mother’s mysterious disappearance.

25 years later, Clara, a celebrated illustrator, brings her daughter Wynnie to England to investigate a new clue to her mother’s abandonment - is she dead or is she leaving clues?

I loved this story. I loved this author’s writing (all that I have read), and I loved the imagery and imagination of all the characters. Although it is loosely based on a real life author, I actually wanted more of the fantasy world, the world of Bronwyn’s character Emjie. I was also fascinated by the time period that was woven throughout - England during the Great Smog or Great Smoke, the end of the war and Churchill’s problematic decision making, the treatment of women, especially those with uncertain mental health and finally, the insight to Beatrix Potter, a beloved author/illustrator.

I think I would classify this as magical realism? It has that feel to me. The Story She Left Behind has so much wisdom woven throughout but the love of all things and people, and the idea of forgiveness as its stronghold.