Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

What readers think of Leaving, plus links to write your own review.

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

Leaving

A Novel

by Roxana Robinson
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (27):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 13, 2024, 344 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2025, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

Page 4 of 4
There are currently 27 reader reviews for Leaving
Order Reviews by:

Write your own review!

Michele N. (Bethesda, MD)

Leaving
Who doesn't think about running into an old flame years later and wonder "what if"? I was hooked from the first line. As Sarah and Warren got to know each other again, I followed along, sometimes pulling for them to re-unite, other times wanting to tell Sarah to run for the hills. Robinson does a nice job of describing the dilemmas of the choices we make, both in our youth and later in life. I liked her premise but had trouble getting through the book – it just went on and on, making me want to "leave" on more than one occasion. While I stayed until the end, it was disappointing…Warren's decision just didn't seem in character. That being said, this would be a great read for a book club. Plenty of issues to discuss.
John A. (Austin, TX)

Leaving Believability
Leaving is a very well written book with interesting characters and events, but it has a major flaw in my opinion. The male lead is true to form in the first half of the book, but behaves in an increasingly unbelievable manner as the book progresses. The character change would have impressed Paul of Road to Damascus fame, although here we are on the Boston to NYC metropolitan areas route.

This would be a decent book club offering for discussion, because its characters are otherwise quite memorable and others might disagree with my characterization of this book's main man.
Mary W. (Mesa, AZ)

leaving by Roxana Robinson
The advance praise for "leaving" is glowing. I just wish the book had lived up to those reviews. The prose is good, the plot plausible. However, the book is too wordy. It's like going to a movie and half-way through the film you say to yourself "Just get it over with." Repetition of similar scenes and repeated avowals of motive stifle the story. The author tries to force the reader to accept her interpretation of character and motive. Let the reader decide. We are adults.

Beyond the Book:
  Puccini's Opera Tosca

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...
  • Book Jacket: My Friends
    My Friends
    by Hisham Matar
    The title of Hisham Matar's My Friends takes on affectionate but mournful tones as its story unfolds...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas--a place ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.