Where You Left Me

Where You Left Me by Jennifer Gardner Trulson

My rating:

3 stars—I liked it.

My thoughts:

I cannot imagine losing my husband in an unforeseen tragedy. This haunts me. You say good-bye and it’s the last time?? Hard to know how someone gets over that. I feel for Trulson and her children in their horrible loss.

Her story was sad and moving, but it somehow felt a bit superficial—like she was holding back. It’s hard to be critical of a tragic story, but the author lacks the ability to really sell her story. It wasn’t inspirational, it wasn’t helpful for grieving, it didn’t give hope that life goes on after tragedy, it fell flat. There was a lot thrown in about high society life that was boring and hard to connect with. It was also difficult to jump from her mourning her husband and then she moving right into a new relationship. It was probably more gradual in actuality but felt very rushed in the story. I understand she was trying to say that there was a second chance at love…but it made a bit less of her relationship with Doug. If I were her editor, I would have stopped the story before the new relationship.

But overall, this was a moving memoir.

Description Goodreads.com:

“Lucky—that’s how Jennifer would describe herself. She had a successful law career, met the love of her life in Doug, married him, had an apartment in New York City, a house in the Hamptons, two beautiful children, and was still madly in love after nearly seven years of marriage. Jennifer was living the kind of idyllic life that clichés are made of.

Until Doug was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, and she became a widow at age thirty-five—a “9/11 widow,” no less, a member of a select group bound by sorrow, of which she wanted no part. Though completely devastated, Jennifer still considered herself blessed. Doug had loved her enough to last her a lifetime, and after his sudden death, she was done with the idea of romantic love—fully resigned to being a widowed single mother . . . until a chance encounter with a gregarious stranger changed everything. Without a clue how to handle this unexpected turn of events, Jennifer faced the question asked by anyone who has ever lost a loved one: Is it really possible to feel joy again, let alone love?

With unvarnished emotion and clear-eyed sardonic humor, Jennifer tells an ordinary woman’s extraordinary tale of unimaginable loss, resilience, friendship, love, and healing—which is also New York City’s narrative in the wake of September 11. Where You Left Me is an unlikely love story, a quintessentially New York story—at once Jennifer’s tribute to the city that gave her everything and proof that second chances are possible.”