Laura S WhartonCritiques

Leaving Lukens by Laura Wharton starts out beautifully. The first chapter is written in the now as old friends meet again at a homecoming in 2000. Then the narration slips back in time to the year 1942 when The War was all around and Lukens was on the verge of becoming a ghost town as its residents moved to less isolated locales. It was in the first chapter that I fell in love with Ella. She seemed such a mysterious and sweet woman. The reader is transported back in time through her memories. This first third of the book is entrancing and easy to read. Things get a little slow as we move into the second third and I found myself wanting to get on with the adventure that I was sure was looming in the coming pages. Finally we get there and the story changes from a simple love story to a tale of intrigue and danger.

There are two basic plots that thread through this story: a sweet love story and a story of mystery and war. The only issue I had with it all, was that the author tended to lose one thread while she concentrated on the other. This was not a huge distraction from enjoying the book, though. Leaving Lukens is a pleasant read and perfectly appropriate for the younger YA crowd as well as adults who like a little mystery thrown in with an innocent romance.