This book was okay. It was mostly about a mother reflecting on her own past and her relationship with her own mother in the midsts of a tragedy caused by her daughter. It’s interesting to see how the main character’s own past and upbringing caused her to have such a strained relationship with her own daughter. I liked how not everything was neatly tied up at the end, but overall it wasn’t a book that constantly held my attention. ( )

This was an enjoyable quick read but I didn't love it. ( )

In The Rest of Her Life, Laura Moriarty delivers a luminous, compassionate, and provocative look at how mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another.
Leigh is the mother of high-achieving, popular high school senior Kara. Their relationship is already strained for reasons Leigh does not fully understand when, in a moment of carelessness, Kara makes a mistake that ends in tragedy -- the effects of which not only divide Leigh's family, but polarize the entire community. We see the story from Leigh's perspective, as she grapples with the hard reality of what her daughter has done and the devastating consequences her actions have on the family of another teenage girl in town, all while struggling to protect Kara in the face of rising public outcry. ( )

This book came to me from Harper Collins First Look program. I was really excited to receive this book because I had read Laura Moriarty's first novel, The Center of Everything, a few years ago and thought it was excellent.

This story is told by Leigh Churchill, a grade school teacher in Danby, Kansas. She is married to Gary, a professor at the local college, and they have two children, Kara and Justin. Kara is 18 and about to graduate from high school. Justin is younger, pre-teenage, but I don't know if his actual age is ever mentioned. At the outset of the story, Kara hits a 16 year old girl with the Suburban she has been driving since she got her driver's license. The 16 year old, Bethany Cleese, dies instantly. Leigh comes home from the last day of school to find Gary, Kara and Justin sitting in the living room looking shell-shocked. The book progresses throughout that summer and we learn how that accident affects everyone in the family.

Laura Moriarty really knows how to get inside someone's head. Although she mentions her own daughter in the acknowledgements, I'm pretty sure she has never been the mother of someone who has killed someone else. Nevertheless, her exploration of Leigh's reactions ring absolutely true. And it's not just Leigh that we come to know through this book. Kara and Justin seemed real to me too as did Leigh's best friend, Eva.

This is the kind of book that makes you think "What if that happened to me? How would I react if I killed someone by accident? What would I do if my child killed someone by accident?" This book would be an interesting read for a book club because it could provoke lots of interesting discussion. ( )

This was a gripping and thought-provoking book about how one careless mistake changed the lives of a family forever. ( )