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Pictures of You
Pictures of You
Pictures of You
Audiobook12 hours

Pictures of You

Written by Caroline Leavitt

Narrated by Robin Miles

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

A tragic accident: One woman is left dead after she and another woman, both running away from their marriages, collide in the fog on a highway. The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why. As these three lives intersect, they are left to ask, How well do we really know those we love-and how do we forgive the unforgivable?
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 25, 2011
ISBN9781615736560
Pictures of You
Author

Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of many novels, including Days of Wonder, With or Without You, Cruel Beautiful World, Is This Tomorrow, Pictures of You, Girls In Trouble, and Coming Back To Me. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

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Reviews for Pictures of You

Rating: 3.5655340577669903 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

206 ratings32 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    a little mushier than i like, but a good read. wished it had ended differently!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Two Women running from their life circumstances met on a foggy desolate road when their cars crash into each other. One of them is killed, her son injured. Thus sets the premise of the novel by Caroline Leavitt. The story is told through the eyes of the the son, his father, and the woman driving the other car. As their lives entertwine the author leads us through the emotional journey of loss, forgiveness, and healing. I enjoyed the audiobook and will look for other books she has written.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Mostly a romantic novel. It revolves around a accident on the road where one woman is killed. The other woman becomes involved in life of the widower and his son. It’s about love , loss and forgiveness. Still, it was a bit bland.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a very enjoyable book. There were little surprises along the way. Makes you think how you would react to a situation like this. She did a great job pulling you into the story and caring about the characters. You understood them. Looking forward to more from Caroline.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Charlie, April and Sam; Luke and Isabelle - two families who never met - but on one fateful day both families are changed forever. For on this day, both April and Isabelle decide to end their marriages. This decision comes to a head three hours away from their Cape Cod town, on a foggy road. One car is spun around, the woman and child standing in the road; the other is approaching, unable to see what is ahead of her until it is far, far too late.How does someone react to the fact that their actions caused a death - everyone feels somehow responsible. How does someone cope with the fact that she is now in love with another woman's family? Can anyone walk away?This is a beach book - plain and simple. It is, however, well written and has a satisfying ending. I would recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Grief may be the messiest of all human emotions. We all grieve differently. Pictures of You is an exploration of grief, of how three survivors - a woman driver, a child passenger and his widowered father - grapple with loss following a fatal car accident in Cape Cod. Neither the father, Charlie, nor the woman driver, Isabelle, can go forward unless issues of the past are dealt with. Meanwhile, Charlie's son, Sam, endures one life-threatening asthma attack after another, while keeping vital secrets to himself and clinging to mystical beliefs.

    Caroline Leavitt does a great job pulling the reader in and keeping up the suspense. The nuanced characters, despite their better judgment, do things they would not normally do, each grappling to find their true center. The simple, restrained prose does not try to teach us how to grieve. It provides an unique portrait of people dealing with the aftermath of unexpected life events, and in Sam and Charlie's case, of ongoing medical challenges as well. Thank you, Caroline.

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    While driving down a single lane highway, escaping her own failed marriage, Isabelle suddenly comes upon a car stopped in her lane with a woman getting out. Driving through heavy fog it is impossible for her to stop. The accident kills the other woman. It was not her fault but nonetheless Isabelle is devastated. Not as devastated as she becomes when through the woman’s son she is drawn into the woman’s life and finds herself falling in love with her widowed husband.

    It sounds like a typical “chick-lit” love story, but this book has a bit of a difference. It explores what happens when an accident leads to the uncovering of all kinds of secrets.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    When I started this book I thought it wasn't great, but it seemed to be going somewhere and I had a feeling it would improve. I went past the Nancy Pearl cut-off point because I kept thinking it was just about to get better. I got past half way and it started to seriously degenerate into a kind of romantic mush of unbelievable plot and characters. I've read other reviewers that say the book ends appropriately (rather than the 'happily ever after' that I felt it was inevitably heading towards), but I couldn't stick it out that far to find out. Also, it seemed like one of those "issue" books which try to teach the readers about a particular health issue - asthma in this case. I don't mind having a health problem featured in a book (Lisa Genova's book about Alzheimer's is a good example of how to do this well), but unfortunately Ms Leavitt overdoes the 'educate the readers' aspect and it just felt like asthma detail was being included for its own sake rather than being an integral part of the story. This is my first reading of a Caroline Leavitt book, and there won't be another.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    a little mushier than i like, but a good read. wished it had ended differently!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Too much like a soap opera; just when you think the drama peaks, here comes another and another... okay, okay enough already! It becomes hard to believe at that point.

    Once the relationship starts between Charlie and Isabelle, Leavitt fails to even explore any guilt on Isabelle's part. This was a HUGE oversight as anyone in her shoes would have those feelings; sleeping in Charlie's bed, eating dinner at their table, etc. Another misstep, an overprotective dad with a highly asthmatic young son gives him free rein as a latchkey kid while struggling with the recent death of his mother? Hmmmm....

    The book can be summed up in the author's own words (p265), when Isabelle thinks, "I killed a woman. It was an accident. I love the victims. It was an accident."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Unique premise. Not sure how someone involved in fatal accident would interact with the victim's next-of-kin, but this seems a huge 'stretch'.
    It was OK to read and interesting in a not-my-genre type way.
    Thought it left one of the characters 'hanging' at the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Two women from the same small Cape Cod town collide on a foggy road one morning. Both were leaving their husbands, but only one, Isabelle, survives. Another survivor is the other's severely asthmatic nine-year-old son, also in the accident. He witnesses what he believes to be an angel at the crash-Isabelle. Leavitt tells a compelling story of how the two survivors' lives entwine, partly because of the boy's desire to talk with Isabelle about his mother. Summary BPLLeavitt's characters behave credibly when it comes to loss and grief. Yet I found the novel as a whole an uneven mix of realistic tragedy and unrealistic romance. Grief can cause people to do crazily uncharacteristic things--but falling in love with the woman who killed your wife in a car crash? Um, no. Plot weakness aside, Ms Leavitt's writing itself reveals a subtle, literary style, drawing the reader into her characters' lives. I am interested in trying another of this author's novels; I would like to know whether Pictures of You was a typical product of Ms Leavitt's pen.7 out of 10. Recommended to readers of domestic fiction.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Two cars collide in the fog, taking the life of one of the women drivers. April and her son Sam were hours from home with a suitcase in the backseat and her husband struggles to come to terms with her death and the affect the accident has on his son. The driver of the other vehicle is Isabelle who also must learn to live with her part of the accident. The lives of these characters intersect and they try to get on with what's left of their lives. Interesting story, somewhat unexciting, but the CD version read by Robin Miles is a good listen.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    it ws a believable plot and good ending. no nice bow around the end everyone living happily ever after but hearts got broken like in rea life. the only thing i still dont understand is why april left her family. somehow i missed that explanation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt - it was short,quick, and entertaining - but it lacked a certain depth that would have made it a favorite for me. Leavitt touches on some heavy issues - death, grief, adultery, etc., but in some cases makes them seem almost trite.In Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt, two women, Isabelle and April, are both driving on a foggy road three hours from their home town. They don't know each other, but they are both driving away from their marriages. April's car is mysteriously stopped in the middle of the road, facing the wrong direction, when Isabelle comes upon it too suddenly (because of the fog) to avoid hitting it. April dies instantly and Isabelle is seriously injured. April's son who is also involved, spends some time in the hospital his severe asthma, but is ultimately okay physically. Both April's family and Isabelle must deal with the aftermath of grief, guilt, and mystery that surrounds the accident.My primary complaint about this novel is that while Leavitt tries to create a realistic world, certain aspects of it are not quite believable. In novels that set out to be fantastic, the authors ask the readers from the beginning to suspend their disbelief. As soon as the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe step through the coats and into a snow-filled world, we as readers know we're in for a reality that does not match our own, and so we can accept and believe it when animals start talking and magical things occur. In a novel that is set in our own reality, however, even the smallest inconsistency can take us out of the story.Pictures of YouFor example, after the accident, Isabelle is racked with guilt and becomes depressed, even though the police agree the collision was not her fault - she was not distracted or speeding, the fog would have made it impossible for her to see the car in time, and after all, April's car was stopped in the wrong direction in the middle of the road. But while Isabelle is still in the hospital before any reporters or even the police have had a chance to talk to her, news articles start appearing in the local paper that include her name and photograph (where did they get one and do they have the right to publish it without her permission?).Furthermore, as the weeks pass and Isabelle doesn't come out and discuss the accident with reporters (she's so depressed she won't even leave her house), they start printing articles that flat out blame her for it, with headlines like "Did photographer's road rage cause accident?" The local papers vilify her as the woman who killed a loving mother and wife. Hardly responsible journalism. But it doesn't raise any eyebrows in the novel. You can say, well maybe this town paper is known for it's awful journalism, so it does make sense within the novel's world. If that's the case, Leavitt should have told us that fact up front. It's back story we would need to know to make sense of the story.But the scenario does not end there. For months after the accident, people actually scorn Isabelle in public. When she does finally recover enough to start working her job at a children's photography studio again, she actually runs into more than one parent who refuses to let the "mother killer" take his/her kid's picture. Seriously? Now, I live in a small city with lots of tourism, just like Isabelle, and we, too, have some really slow news days at our local paper. But I cannot imagine so many people holding a grudge that long for something that doesn't make logical sense in the first place. Looking at the facts of the accident, it clearly was not something Isabelle could have prevented. I understand that when you factor in emotion, facts get blurry, but that emotional that long after the event? I'll only believe that if the person was very close to April, and the book tells us that nobody but her husband and son were. The whole thing struck me as unbelievable and really distracted me from the overall story.The second unbelievable scenario that distracted me in Pictures of You was when Sam, April's son, calls information and asks for the number for "Isabelle Stein" in New York City and gets only one result. It doesn't say he gave the address, just the name. Do we really think there is only one listing for Isabelle Stein in New York City? It was too convenient, and all Leavitt needed to do to make it believable was say that Sam also gave Isabelle's address when he called information. We know Isabelle gave it to him.I know these two aspects of the novel are minor, but they are all that come to mind when I start thinking about this book. Plus, the details in the newspaper situation that make it unbelievable are also, I think, unnecessary to the plot or character development. We need to see the guilt building in Isabelle, yes, but that kind of thing is much more powerful when it comes from internal rather than external sources. And, as I've already mentioned, the phone listing issue could have been easily fixed.There were, however, definitely aspects of the novel that I thought were very well done.First, all the scenes from Sam's point of view are excellent. He thinks and grieves like a child. Leavitt does an amazing job getting us into his head to understand his grief experience. I also liked the ending - non-formulaic, realistic, and original.All in all, I enjoyed Pictures of You, but I would have enjoyed it more without the unbelievable bits that distracted me from the story. It was unfortunate that these couple of flaws were all I could think about. Just goes to show how important details are in a book.Originally posted on Read Handed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    April. Charlie and Sam. Isabelle. Four lives that intersect as a result of a decision to escape one's life.Pictures of You begins with Isabelle fleeing her marriage after she discovers her husband is having an affair. Luke is not the man her mother wants her to be with when she began dating him as a teenager. Instead of listening to her mother's warnings, Isabelle runs off with Luke and later marries him.April is not the typical "girl-next-door" type. Which is why Charlie fell in love with her the moment he first saw her. The pair eventually marry and have one son, Sam. Sam suffers from asthma and finds himself always under his parents' cautious watch. Some may think April's parenting style is unconventional, but it's obvious she adores Sam.That same fateful day Isabelle decides to leave her husband, April is also escaping her life. The two collide on a foggy day leaving April dead, Charlie and Sam grieving over her death and Isabelle feeling responsible for killing her. Weighed down with remorse, Isabelle seeks out Charlie and Sam. She wants to tell them how sorry she is for what has happened and asks for Charlie's forgiveness. Instead she finds herself drawn to Sam and begins a relationship with Charlie.Pictures of You provides an inside look on how grief affects the living. For Charlie, he now is forced to raise Sam alone and to honestly look at his marriage and the woman he fell in love with. How well do we really know our spouse? Charlie is left with many unanswered questions surrounding April's death.Isabelle initially isolates after the accident. When she starts picking up the pieces to move forward, she is given a second chance. Will she take advantage of this opportunity despite what has happened? Or will she wallow in self-guilt about the accident and the end of her marriage that she remains permanently stuck?And Sam. How does a young boy grow up without his mother? April was different than the others moms. She took him out of school so the two of them could have an adventure. How will he adjust to Isabelle's and Charlie's relationship?Pictures of You is by no means a light, quick read. Leavitt created characters so complex that I found myself slowing down to take in the story. I admit I was against Isabelle's and Charlie's relationship from the start. Leavitt's style of writing vividly painted the raw pain and deep loss both felt after the accident, that it was almost as though they were drawn to each other as two magnets. Yes, I understood their immediate attraction for each other, however I did not want to see them as a couple.April is the link that ties Charlie, Sam and Isabelle together. Unfortunately the reader does not hear April's story in her own voice. Instead the reader learns about April through memories and other people's perceptions. From this, I found it difficult to like April and easy to judge her. I wish I could have read April's story in her voice, especially the events that led her to leave Charlie.Despite my reservations with Charlie's relationship with Isabelle and not hearing April's voice, I still highly recommend Pictures of You. Leavitt will keep you up long into the night as you find yourself being pulled into the story.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Pictures of You is a novel of accidents, coincidences, and mystery. The lives of Isabelle and April collide one foggy afternoon on a lonely country road. April is killed leaving a bewildered husband and son to try to understand why she was on that lonely road and where she was going. Isabelle, drowning in grief over the accident and the rest of her destroyed life, can't leave April's husband and son alone, becoming more and more involved in the mystery of April's motivations. This chance relationship looks to head either in the direction of salvation or that of destruction, the reader won't know until the end.Pictures of You is an interesting look at the consequences of the choices women make between love, family, and career. Must women sacrifice everything for their children and husbands? How do you balance their needs with your own? And what happens when a woman has given up everything for her family and then discovers it isn't enough? I loved the idea of this book, but had some problems with the execution. The coincidences were just too unlikely for me to believe in them wholeheartedly and the relationships between characters were undeveloped and difficult to relate to. I was especially confused and disturbed by the interactions between Isabelle and her own mother which just never made sense to me. I listened to Pictures of You on audio, narrated by Robin Miles. She does a great job of portraying Isabelle, especially convincing us of her insecurities and confusion. I wish that she had developed different, more distinct voices for the other characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Imagine you are leaving your husband. You could either be leaving because he’s had an affair and gotten another woman pregnant after years of dealing with your own infertility or because the marriage and motherhood is killing your soul. Imagine you’re the first woman driving to New York to start a new life. Imagine you’re the second woman and you’re forced to stop on the road on your way to your destination because your young asthmatic son stowed away in the car unbeknownst to you, messing up your plans entirely. Now imagine an accident involving both women and you are the one to survive. You are that first, childless woman, who has left that sick little boy without a mother. How can you even imagine you’ll survive the guilt and remorse that isn’t made any lighter knowing that it all was one horrible accident?When I first started driver’s training I worried about being involved in a fatal accident. Even if it wasn’t my fault, there’s the guilt. How do you forgot it. Those worries were brought back to the forefront with Pictures of You. That the women were both running away from similar ghosts made the accident all the more poignant. It also brings up something that adults often forget – children don’t always understand what’s happen and live with a damaging guilt all their own. My heart broke equally for Isabelle, Sam and his father Charlie. For April, not so much, though. I can’t pinpoint if it is because of her character or the fact that it’s much easier to leave than to be left behind.Pictures of You isn’t told in a linear fashion. At the beginning you get a rough snapshot of Isabelle’s experiences before and after the accident. The husband she left did what he could to take care of her, but even in what was among her darkest moments, she knew that the two of them had no future together. The accident even brings the terse relationship with her mother to new lows. She hides herself away in the home she shared with her husband, spurning friends, and somehow trying to deal with the community’s reaction to what happened. She wasn’t portrayed in the greatest light and her refusal to speak to the media. Ultimately, it costs her job and pieces of her sanity.Meanwhile, Charlie and Sam are living in another sort of hell. Charlie was completely blindsided by the accident. He couldn’t understand why April had excused Sam from school or where she was taking him at the time. Sam, living inside his own guilt-ridden head, isn’t answering questions. The more that Charlie learns about the accident, the more the reader does as well. One thing is certain, he didn’t want Isabelle to have anything to do with Sam, no matter how Sam seeks her out. It isn't until he realizes the power of their connection that he relents. He doesn’t want Sam to get hurt. At the same time, he doesn’t want to be left behind anymore than he already has been.Pictures of You arrived as an unexpected delight from Algonquin Books. As soon as I picked it up, I knew I had to read it. There was just something about the cover and the synopsis that drew me to it. Once I started reading, I didn’t want to put it down. Carolyn Leavitt is a gorgeous writer and her story illuminates the ongoing trauma caused by both fatal car accidents and broken marriages. First you have to decide that you want to survive, but ultimately that’s not enough. From there, everyday you have to learn how to make it happen. Leavitt doesn't punish her characters, but she makes them work for their lives. I loved every minute of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This story centers around two couples, a car crash, and a young boy. Two women, April and Isabelle, are leaving their husbands. They crash on a foggy, deserted road and April dies. April's son, Sam, was in the car and witnessed the crash. Isabelle blames herself and finds it hard to move on with her life. Isabelle begins walking by Sam's house...just to check on him and they end up becoming friends.All the relationships in this story are quite complicated. I understood why Isabelle left her husband, but couldn't quite understand how April could leave her husbamd and her son. The person I felt most connected to was Sam. He was torn in so many directions and was so confused. I enjoyed listening to this book. I would have liked a different ending, but it did have an ending, so that is something!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    April and Isabelle--two unhappy wives who have never met. April, a homemaker with an 8-year-old severely asthmatic son, feels trapped by her circumstances; Isabelle, a childless photographer who married too young, has just discovered her husband is seeing another woman who is pregnant with his child. By pure chance, these two strangers from the same town become linked forever when Isabelle's car strikes and kills April on a foggy road in Connecticut on the day both women separately chose to leave their homes and begin new lives. Sam, April's son, survives with only minor physical injuries.Although based on a somewhat improbable event, Catherine Leavitt's Pictures of You provides an accurate depiction of how guilt and grief can impact a person's ability to move beyond the emotional damage of tragedy and unresolved conflicts. Charlie, now a widower, is so consumed with grief and shock at discovering April was leaving him that he fails to provide the love, care, and comfort Sam so desperately needs. Isabelle, on the other hand, wants so badly to escape the crush of guilt that she fails to consider how allowing herself to meet and fall in love with the victim's family might ultimately affect Sam as well as Charlie. Other peripheral relationships also contribute to the drama of this unusual narrative, as well as the mystery of where April was going when she left Cape Cod that day. Where will this tangle of emotions lead?While there are times when the characters' inner ruminations impede rather than advance the story, Leavitt's remarkable ability to capture certain emotions and scenes with deceptively simple language is worth the price of a few plodding passages. The narrator, Robin Miles, provides an thoroughly enjoyable reading which listeners may find it hard to pull away from the story when other duties call. For those who find Jodi Picoult or Laura Moriarty a bit too heavy, Leavitt's Pictures of You should prove just right.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Disappointing for me...none of the characters were likeable. Lots of melodrama and bad behavior.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pictures of you is a story of love, loss and regret. As Isabelle is driving down a seemingly deserted road on a foggy night, she comes upon a woman in a red dress standing in the middle of the road. Isabelle is not able to stop in time and hits and kills the woman. Little did she know that Charley was hiding alongside the road and saw his mother as the car hit her. There are many unanswered questions. Why were April and her son Charley out on such a deserted road and where were they going? Sam, April's husband and Charley's father begins by hiring a dectective to find some answers.The story goes on to tell of Isabelle's life after the accident and how she is effected, as well as how Charley and Sam, cope with April's death. Caroline Leavitt does a masterful job of expressing the grief that must be worked through due to a tragic loss.I had a hard time with her definition of love. She often had her characters saying "I love you.", but then their actions did not espress that love. Isabelle, Sam and April all seemed a bit too self-centered for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked this book primarily because it dealt with some atypical subject matter. Two women collide in the fog while seemingly trying to "escape" a relationship with their significant other. One woman is killed, the other must live with the aftermath of knowing she killed, albeit accidentally, another man's wife. Woman then forms a relationship with dead woman's husband. It sounds rather simple & almost cheesy, but it's not. There are a lot of complicated emotions thrown in here; people's lives affected. Did I like this book? Yes, I did. It was refreshingly different and what I would consider an honest interpretation of a difficult situation. I liked the ending in that it was not what I had expected, although I'm not sure it brought about the closure I was wanting. And I think I may have titled this book differently (although what, I don't know right off hand...), but it does make me curious about earlier works from an author I previously was not familiar with.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Isabelle and April, both distraught and driving away from their marriages, collide in the fog. April dies, and Isabelle is left with guilt, even though she is told the accident was not her fault. She becomes fixated on April's husband, Charlie, and her son, Sam. Eventually their lives become intertwined.This is my first book written by Caroline Leavitt, and I loved it. I especially enjoyed the ending.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Author, Caroline Leavitt has created a contemporary fiction where two women appear to be running away when their cars collide and ironically, so do their lives. Sam, is the 9 year old boy with asthma who, at the scene of the accident, feels he's seen an image of an angel, and as you read the story perhaps he truly has.Leavitt manages to show depths of each character's own humanity. This allows the reader to see both the good and perhaps the not so good. The author has an uncanny ability to steer the novel thru the tangles of grief. Your heart both rejoices and aches with second chances and missed opportunities. Leavitt had the courage to leave us with a more realistic ending that reminded me to re-examine my own choices while appreciating the heavy weight of regret.My first read by this author in audio format and it was well done.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the first book of Caroline Leavitt's I've read (or, rather, in this case, listened to--I got the CD version). There's a little bit of everything--romance, personal growth, hurt and healing, and an ending that couldn't have been predicted. I respected Leavitt a lot for that ending. It saved the book from becoming "chick lit". The story revolves around a car accident, and you discover more and more about the inner lives of the characters rippling out from the accident in rings of discoveries. The truth about life is that people have layers--some good and some bad. Leavitt portrays these layers with compassion and understanding, but also an honesty that leaves no one utterly blameless. The book is very well written, compelling and full of interesting histories and motives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I had to read this book through tears most of the time. It is so moving, and the characters are so real. I loved how much Charlie adored his wife, and how dedicated he was to his son Sam, even though his grief threatened to engulf him. The writing is sublime. After April's death, when Charlie is asked about the organ donor card found in his wife's wallet, he thinks, "someone else would touch April's skin. Someone else would see through her eyes." Those lines just killed me, and told you all you needed to know about Charlie's love for April. Another line that got me was the author's description of Luke's attraction to the much younger Isabelle. "When he smiled at Isabelle, his eyes were full of light. He looked at her like she was the most interesting thing he had ever seen." You understand why Isabelle became so smitten with Luke; what woman wouldn't want a man to look at her like that? Leavitt uses imagery beautifully in this novel. When Isabelle realizes too late that Luke has been cheating on her, she recalls how he had been nice to her after she found earrings the house that weren't hers or smelled perfume, "how he'd taken her out to a fancy dinner, how he reeled her back in so tenderly that she didn't notice the sharpness of the hook." You can just see Isabelle as the poor fish hooked on Luke's line.Photography plays a big part in the book. Isabelle is a photographer and she teaches Sam how to take photos. It bonds them together, and becomes the one thing that helps Sam overcome his grief and guilt over his mother's death. She tells Sam that photographs sometimes shows things that aren't there, things that you have to look deeper for the hidden meaning. Much of this lovely novel is people realizing they really don't know the ones they love most.I so enjoy when the ending of a book surprises me, and Leavitt does a brilliant job with the resolution of the story. It takes you to unexpected, but satisfactory, places. She jumps forward in time, and lets the reader know how these characters have fared, but leaves enough questions lingering that allows these wonderful characters to live ons. I will not forget Charlie, Isabelle and Sam, and will think of them fondly for a very long time. Pictures of You is a moving, heartbreaking novel about the power of healing and forgiveness, with interesting, yet flawed, characters. Fans of good fiction who want to be taken on an emotional journey should read this book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A tragic car crash leaves one driver (April) dead and the other driver (Isabelle) distraught and reeling with the guilt of killing a mother and wife.I found myself wondering if I would act as Isabelle did after the terrible accident. Would I have the nerve to approach the grieving father and son for more than an apology? Would Charlie and Sam be able to interact on any level with the woman who was responsible for killing April? And what would happen if they could?Isabelle, Charlie and Sam are fleshed out in such a way that I understood the motivation of each character. Isabel was fleeing a failed marriage to the only man she’d ever loved. Charlie knew things hadn’t been great with April and they’d even had words the last time they saw each other. Sam has a secret that eats away at him. He seemed so lost and unable to ask for help. I felt sympathy for all three.Caroline Leavitt’s novel is mesmerizing – I didn’t want to stop reading. I wanted to know where she was taking her characters. How would things end for Sam, Charlie and Isabelle? Would there be a chance for them to be happy or content – together or on their own? I must say I was surprised by a few twists near the end of the book. They would definitely prompt some interesting discussions for book groups.One issue that came up for me after finishing was the timing of the novel. When did the bulk of the story take place? I was unsure about it and that bothered me a bit.I enjoyed Leavitt’s writing and will definitely look for more of her books. Robin Miles’ narration was wonderful. She was easy to listen to and the voices she gave the characters worked for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Pictures of You fluctuates between several characters, and that can be a tricky thing to do. Somehow Caroline Leavitt does this beautifully. Although Isabella was by far my favorite, both Sam and Charlie were well-rounded and touching.Leavitt also takes several genres on at once. Pictures of You is mostly a women’s literature read, but it does include some mystery and paranormal aspects as well. Women’s literature, for me, follows the major decisions that a woman has to make. The novel helps her across some trauma, and main does Isabella have trauma! Isabella faces survivor’s guilt and low expectations. She’s got this loser husband, and she has huge mother issues. Isabella disappointed me at points, but when she finally turned her life around I wanted to cheer out loud.April, on the other hand, did not appeal to me at all. I know that I am supposed to feel for the dead wife. I know that I am supposed to think she is/was free spirited. I really only felt like she was annoying, and at the conclusion I felt vindicated.I really enjoyed Pictures of You, and I am ready to pick up more Caroline Leavitt.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Based on the "blurb," I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. A book about two women in a car crash and the ramifications of that tragedy on the people involved. It sounded depressing and disturbing. As I read the book, I liked the beginning but wasn't sure I was going to like it all. I was concerned that the author would wrap it up in a nice, neat package. By the end, I could not put the book down. It was not a neat package, but rather an honest look at relationships, grief, and the impact of a tragedy. As such, there are moments of happiness and moments of extreme sadness. I will be thinking about this book for a while.