Alice Metcalf was an accomplished scientist, studying grief among elephants. She was a wife to Thomas, and a mother to Jenna. When Jenna was three, she disappeared from hospital after a keeper at the elephant sanctuary she and Thomas ran was killed under suspicious circumstances.
Ten years later, Thomas is in a psychiatric hospital, having suffered a complete mental breakdown after the events of that night. Jenna, now 13 and raised by her maternal grandmother, decides to go looking for answers about what happened to her mother. Did Alice really leave her behind? Did she not have a choice? Or is she dead?Jenna invokes the help of two people for her search- Virgil Stanhope, one of the original detectives on her mother's case a decade prior; and Serenity Jones, a psychic.
From the beginning, I was intrigued by the story, mostly because of the elephant aspect. Elephants are my mother's favourite animal (well, elephants, wombats and turtles), so I've always been interested in them. And one of my favourite things about Jodi's books, is that I always learn something. The amount of research she puts in is incredible.
It admittedly took me a few chapters to place Serenity, she was a character in a short story Jodi released earlier this year through Kindle, When there's smoke, which I thoroughly enjoyed; so I was very pleased to see Serenity again in this instance. I love when characters from past books appear, and you get a little insight to where they are now. It's like catching up with an old friend.
You don't have to have read When there's smoke before reading Leaving Time, Serenity's background is recapped adequately, but I recommend reading it first anyway. It's a short story people, it won't take long.
The elephants aside, it took me a while to warm to Alice's story- which is stories of her studies on elephants in Africa leading up to the events of her disappearance and what actually happened that night. I found the stories fascinating, but I was much more engaged in Jenna's story and her search for Alice and working with Virgil and Serenity to learn the truth.And then the story took a twist that I did not see coming.
There was a moment when Virgil and Serenity first appeared in the story, and I thought I had picked what was going to happen; and then something happened that made me change my mind. (I can't say what without giving away spoilers, so this may sound confusing. Just read the book, ok?)
Well, it turns out I was kind of on the right track- but not to the extent of what turn the plot took. Despite my earlier thoughts, I was caught totally by surprise and left gaping at the pages.
If you are a psychic sceptic, completely against the idea, you're not going to like Leaving Time. If you believe in that kind of thing, or are at least willing to suspend your disbelief long enough to read 398 pages, I recommend it.
If you like elephants, I really recommend this book, although it has some very sad stories in it about elephants and grief.
More than anything, Leaving Time is really about the relationship between a mother and her child.
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