Beautiful, moving, heartbreaking, bittersweet and devastatingly raw, Leaving is a riveting portrait of a marriage ending while a new love blossoms, and the price we can pay for love. One night at the opera, Sarah runs into her high school sweetheart, Warren. Now sixty, the pair haven’t seen each other for forty years and married other people, but it is immediately evident they still have a strong connection. They can’t stop thinking about each other and start to meet, tentatively reconnecting as they catch up on the years they’ve spent apart. Sarah was single when they met, while Warren was in an unhappy marriage, which he decides to end to grasp his chance at happiness with the love that got away, sparking a chain of events that ask them just how much they are willing to sacrifice for their love and the chance of a future together. I was not prepared for this book! Beautifully told, reflective, lingering and compelling, Roxana Robinson drew me in and I lost myself in the lives of these richly drawn, relatable and flawed characters. Robinson expertly conveys the overwhelming, painful, and often conflicting emotions that come with these situations, the characters’ emotions leaping from the pages. She also wonderfully writes the euphoria and fear of falling in love after heartbreak and the complexities of trying to merge established lives to create a new, blended family. As someone who has been through divorce and then been lucky enough to find my soulmate and create a blended family, I related to so much of what Sarah and Warren experienced. I know the heartache of being trapped in a marriage you know is not right and the strength it takes to walk away. I also know the betrayal that Warren’s wife, Janet, felt when your whole world falls apart because you learn your husband has been having an affair. My heart was with all of these characters in so many ways but there were also times I couldn’t understand or condone their actions. It is one hell of an emotional journey. And that ending! I can’t stop thinking about it and don’t know when I’ll get over it. Mesmerising, heartstopping and achingly real, Leaving is a powerful story that I highly recommend.