Title: If I Let You GoAuthor: Charlotte Levin
Published by: Pan Macmillan on Sep. 5, 2023
Genres: General Fiction
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publishers Group Canada
Book Rating: 8/10
If I Let You Go by Charlotte Levin is a deeply moving and gripping portrayal of a woman coming to terms with loss.
Every morning Janet Brown goes to work cleaning offices. It calms her, cleanliness, neatness. All the things she’s unable to do with her soul can be achieved with a damp cloth and a splash of bleach. However, the guilt she still carries about a devastating loss that happened eleven years ago, cannot be erased.
Then, Janet finds herself involved in a train crash and, recognising the chance to do what she couldn’t all those years ago, she makes a decision. As news spreads of Janet’s actions, her story inspires everyone around her, and for the first time her life has purpose and the future is filled with hope.
But Janet’s story isn’t quite what it seems, and as events spiral out of control, she soon discovers that coming clean isn’t an option. Because if Janet washes away the lies, what long-buried truths will she finally have to face.
Review:
Nuanced, gripping, and tight!
If I Let You Go is an unsettling, character-driven novel that introduces us to Janet, a young woman who, after a tragic accident eleven years ago, has spent her life in the shadows, performing her cleaning job to the best of her abilities, keeping house and placating her domineering husband, and visiting her elderly father as often as possible, until one night she decides she’s had enough and by morning her life will be irrevocably changed forever when she wakes to discover she’s a heroine of a train crash she can’t actually remember.
The writing is crisp and edgy. The characters are anxious, tormented, and flawed. And the plot is a tense, unpredictable tale full of twists, turns, revelations, insecurities, deception, grief, manipulation, lies, and tragedy.
Overall, If I Let You Go is an intriguing, intense, immersive tale by Levin that does a wonderful job of highlighting just how devastating and all-consuming guilt and grief can be and reminds us to savour every moment because life can often change in a heartbeat.
This book is available now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
About Charlotte Levin
Charlotte Levin has been shortlisted for the Andrea Badenoch Award, part of the New Writers North Awards, and for the Mslexia Short Story Competition. Charlotte lives in Manchester and If I Can't Have You is her first novel.
Photograph courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.
