Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt

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Pictures of You
by Caroline Leavitt
(Audio)

I was surprised by this book. A book that revolves around the central event of a car accident might not be the kind of thing you'd want to listen to in your car. But I found it interesting, entertaining, and easy to earread. The accident occurs early into the novel, as two women leave their respective husbands and, unfortunately, collide on the road on a dark & foggy night. One of the women survives, and that one keeps wanting to know what happened. How do you recover from something like accidentally killing a woman who has a family? The answer is: not easily. The family (husband and son) of the woman who died keep finding their own lives drawn toward the woman who survived (little Sam keeps intentionally seeking her out, because he saw her at the scene and thinks she is an angel). Their lives intersect and then come crashing together in strange ways. The way it turns out in the end was satisfying to me, albeit not at all what I expected. It felt realistic, though, the way it turned out, so I'm happy with that.

The characters were really what kept me engrossed--especially Sam (poor little kid!). Charlie, Isabelle, Sam, and even April seemed so real to me by the end of the book I almost wasn't sure if this was fiction or nonfiction (almost).