Isabel Rosen is tucked in her New Hampshire college working on her thesis about Edith Wharton. Talented, her writing is hailed by the married and once successful poet R.H. Connelly, who is substituting for Joanna Maxwell who oversees the senior writing workshop. Connelly helps Isabel with her writing and an affair begins.
Set in the eve of the Clinton- Lewinsky scandal and pre-#MeToo, the author provides a coming of age story with all of the emotional, cerebral manifestations and scarring that Isabel experiences. The reading is well done making for a recommended reading experience.
Thank you NetGalley, Henry Holt Publishing and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.

For fans of contemporary, coming-of-age, evocative and intellectual dark academia. It is an epoch story detailing the life of a young adult in her senior year of college in the late 90’s.

It feels like a story similar of my early twenties—the narrator’s story takes place in the late 90s instead of late aughts for myself. I found myself nostalgic over the careful details of the particular era, allowing me to understand the strains and every day tasks of a student in college during the late 90s. Even the topical news references was interesting, and made the story feel very authentic.

I found myself underlining/noting/saving many paragraphs that spoke for me or made me ponder. The book fascinated me from beginning to end and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Isabel is in her final year at Wilder college when a friend asks her to come up to his room to get out of the cold. Was it rape? She doesn’t really know. She didn’t want to do it, but she wasn’t exactly clear about it either? When the new semester begins, she quickly becomes intrigued by the new married writing professor Connelly. He likes her writing, makes her feel seen and heard, and wants her. What more could she ask for?

WHEW! Lots of My Dark Vanessa vibes in this one! This is a book that will leave you really thinking. I think we have all been a position where after we wondered, was that what I wanted, why did that happen, etc. Sadly, many have been in the position of explicitly saying I don’t want this to happen and it being ignored. This book really makes you think about consent, not just at a peer to peer level, but also at the professor to student level. On the surface, everything between Isabel and Connelly is technically consensual. However, he is still the true “adult” in the situation and holds a position of power as her professor and someone that believes in her writing. It also takes place around the same time as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which I think added an interesting component as Isabel and her friends discussed the scandal. This one is heavy, but if you enjoyed My Dark Vanessa I think you will enjoy this one too.

The best book I've read in a long time! I absolutely LOVED this book! I can't get over how good this is! This will be the most talked about debut novel this year!

This story would be relatable to anyone that has ever looked back at their younger self and thought,"I was such an idiot." Very much hindsight is 20/20.

*Thank you to the publisher for this eARC.

This book was really beautiful yet heartbreaking. This is the kind of book where you see yourself in every character, in their good and their bad. Loved the connection to New York and the way the story felt like Isabel was telling you everything from her later life. Really gave the element of retrospection and made you feel like she thought about her retelling of the events of that last year of college.

This debut novel tackles some very heavy and difficult subjects. That being said, I struggled to write this review a little bit. The writing style of this one is top notch and so beautiful. This is a very character-driven story with not a lot of plot per say as it is more about the coming of age story of the main character, Isabel, in her senior year of college. She is very relatable in that she is 22 and has not a clue about anything and makes many frustrating decisions. I often found myself so annoyed with her and had to remind myself of how clueless I was at that age and was not struggling with the same things she was (trauma over the death of her mother, sexual assault, an inappropriate relationship with her professor). But like Isabel, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at 22, and I think that is really the strength of this story.

I did find this novel a tad long and felt like it was missing something. I think because the topics explored have been so explored in recent fiction that I wanted something to make it stand out from the crowd, and it never really got there for me. Despite the difficult topics discussed, I never quite felt the strong emotional pull in this novel.

That being said, I would still recommend this if you like more character-driven stories and don’t mind a slower burn with fairly anti-climatic plots. The writing in this one is so well-done that it honestly made up for a lot of the faults I felt while reading. I am very excited to read more from this author in the future.

'My Last Innocent Year' was an exquisite study on the psyche of young women and the men who prey on their vulnerabilities. The story itself was a slow burn, but I appreciated that it allowed you to fully soak in the complexity of our main character's situation. An unwelcoming, but truthful story about consent, womanhood, and coming into your own in a world that rejects the idea of an intelligent woman.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for this E-ARC in exchange of my honest opinion!

TW: rape, physical abuse, verbal abuse, mention of depression, mention of death, suicide attempts, cheating, alcohol, death, child neglect, kidnapping, and mention of miscarriage

This book follows Isabel, an English major college student in her final semester at Wilder University, and includes a nonconsensual sexual encounter with a friend that she thought she could trust, multiple affairs with her substitute writing professor, her father and his appetizing store in the Lower East Side of New York City, and a lot of flashbacks in regards to Isabel's mother, who passed away.

This book was written in a unique but beautiful way. The pacing and time of this book was done with care, especially with diving into the characters past and future, and then going back to being in the moment. Also, I enjoyed learning small thing about the Jewish culture, which is one of the big things that is written in this book. I really liked how the author implemented a small mystery aspect as well. This book is advertised as a book that tackles consent, which it does, but it's not what the book is about. As stated above, multiple things happened throughout this book, which made the book to feel like it was all over the place, but it actually was not. The author wrapped up each encounter perfectly. I would definitely read more from this author!

It’s a trope we all know well: lost young woman goes to college, lost young woman wants to be a writer, lost young woman catches the eye of her older, married professor, complicated and unfulfilling illicit affair ensues. My Last Innocent Year doesn’t stop there, though, both to its credit and sometimes its detriment.

It’s hard to say something new on power dynamics, manipulation, and desire through the affair-with-a-professor trope, which is perhaps why the author included so many other plots: a sexual encounter the narrator, Isabel, spends most of the book trying to define as either nonconsensual or consensual, domestic abuse and toxic marriage, Jewish identity, reckoning with the death of a parent, the art of literature, and more. And because the bulk of the plot is set in the late 90s, the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal is ever-present, clearly a mirror for Isabel and her professor’s affair, at times a little too obvious and convenient. It’s interesting that this book is set around the same time as Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, which is less sinister but more original.

The string that’s supposed to tie all the storylines together is the theme of consent, which felt very on-the-nose; no one will come away from this book confused on what the message was. But sometimes that string is stretching too far, from the very first semi-consensual encounter — the reaction to which felt out of place within the novel, so much more like one we’d see today, with the context and understanding of not only rape culture but informed consent, than in the 90s — to Isabel middle-aged and reflecting back on her life and its place in the post-Trump world we know today. The string does tie together at the end, but the bow is pristine, meant to remind us that the past informs the present, and the present redefines the past. So it goes.

Despite Isabel being unoriginal, she is still so painfully relatable for a certain time in many women’s lives. Part of me wants to say, “great, we don’t need anymore white, young, female narratives,” and the other part of me, the part that felt like Isabel a decade ago, wants to hold her story up to the world as a warning — this still happens on college campuses. It happens in workplaces. It happens in the home. Young women have always had their agency removed by men who promise to grant them some. Saying no is a privilege, and women have always had to weigh the danger of saying it.

3-3.5/5 stars

I haven’t had a reading experience like this in a very long time.
My Last Innocent Year is about Isabel, who is entering her final semester at school. After an unwanted sexual experience, she feels a pull towards her writing professor. This turns into an affair.
While the main arc of the story could easily be described as a dissection of a power dynamic between a younger woman and older man, what I found more gripping was a young woman’s navigation through grief and a complicated relationship with her father. How much do we owe our parents? Do we owe them more when they’re gone?
I lost so much of my time reading this. Became completely absorbed by it. I can’t wait to see what’s next for this author.

I wanted to read this book because nothing calls to me more than the words “coming of age” and “college” in a novel’s description. I know that we read to lose ourselves, to escape reality, but I believe that we also read to find ourselves. In Isabel I had a painful glimpse of who I was in college, the things that I longed for, the things that I thought I knew about life when in reality I was so naive, and the things that I didn’t realize I actually knew the answer to all along.

This book is also full of rich descriptions of Isabel’s Jewish heritage and culture and what it was like to move from a primarily Jewish neighborhood in NYC to a place where no one knows anything about your culture. I absolutely loved the rich descriptions of Rosen’s Appetizers, Isabel’s trip home for Passover Seder, and the way that she examined and confronted her relationship with her father and his expectations for her as an adult.

This is also a book about consent that is set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. It explores what consent means to the people in our lives, how we ourselves classify sexual assault, and how sometimes we confuse ourselves with what we want or think we should want or don’t know how to say that we don’t want.

This is a book about all the ways in which you’ll forever be a girl even once you’re in a woman’s body.

The year is 1998. Monica Lewinsky is at the center of the media. Shania Twain is “still the one” and Isabel Rosen in a senior at Wilder College in New Hampshire.
Isabel is a Jewish New-Yorker aspiring to become an author. This last year year takes a bit of a turn, when right before winter break she has a nonconsensual sexual encounter after a party and is unsure how to react to it.
When she returns to campus, she's propelled into an affair with her married professor 20 years her junior.
The writer did a really excellent job of capturing what it's like to be in college at this time and confused with life. Not only was Isabel trying to navigate her way through different relationships, she's also trying to figure out what she wants to do after college.
I surprised myself by liking this one so much. I found the main character really likable and relatable, and even though her story is less than the ideal college experience, the author does such a good job of creating an authentic university atmosphere that I found the reading really nostalgic.
Overall, I would recommend reading this book. It does deal with some heavy, dark themes, so make sure to read the description first. Rape, mental illness, sexual experiences, grief, loss.
Debuting 2/14/23.
If you were a fan of “my dark Vanessa” this I would consider her milder step sister book.
Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

This one was a bit of a slow burn; I read through it quickly, but the pace at the beginning is quite slow. The author does an excellent job of gradually building the protagonist and the world around her, but the pacing is the sacrifice for that. I enjoyed the novel, though I think it's one of the stories where it's very much inside the narrator's head and untangling her experiences to figure out how she can move forward. There are some aspects of the novel that also lean towards tropes, especially her relationship with her professor and art school/creative life in general.

This fairly short novel (300 pages) packs a big punch! The opening scene immediately hooked me in & I devoured this book in a couple short days. We follow Isabel through her journey at Wilder College, including her affair with one of her married professors.

This novel makes you rethink everything you thought you knew. It covers consent in sexual encounters and the nuances that can change everything, it covers affairs and secrets and the power and thrill you feel from keeping those secrets close. This book covers marriage and death and family and growing up poor. The narrator was so interesting, perfectly balancing the recklessness and naïveté of youth with the nostalgia and wisdom of someone looking back on things later.

This book has such parallels to my own life & college experience (minus the affair with a professor 😂), and really made me nostalgic for those magical years where you’re playing at being adults but really have absolutely no idea about anything. This was such a fascinating read set against the backdrop of the late 90s and the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton scandal.

I can’t wait to see what Daisy Alpert Florin does next!! 😍

ARC from Netgalley and Henry Holt and Co

After losing her mom to cancer, Isabela Rosen’s heads to Wilder College. Her last semester in college as an English major includes a nonconsensual sexual encounter, an affair with her married professor, and much more. She finds herself in the middle of gossip and messy situations. This girl seems to be a mess until the end when you think maybe she finds herself. She is trying to figure adulthood out and a lot of times her character made me cringe. It was painful as Isabel navigated her way to graduation and beyond.
The plot was slow and had a consistent flow. This story made me question a lot of things and a lot of Isabel’s choices. The way serious subjects like rape, mental health and domestic abuse were treated baffled me. It felt as if the characters all walked around with their head in the sand. I was uncomfortable with how things were handled or not addressed. In the end, there was no resolution or it was just empty.

This story was beautifully written - though highly difficult to read at times, given the content.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company, Henry Holt and Co. for the chance to read this book!

I wanted to love this story but I DNF. It could be because the storyline did not hold my interest or the genre was not my type.

This book was absolutely beautiful. The writing, the themes it deals with, the characters fleshed out so well. Absolutely a banger of a debut novel. Will love to read more from the author.

Thank you @netgalley and @henryholtbooks for this ARC!

I don’t read much literary fiction but I’m glad I gave this a try. It kept me up thinking the night I finished. The book is a well-done coming-of-age story and is beautifully written. There are dark elements to the storyline but nothing overwhelming. While I felt parts of this could have been taken further and I wished there was a little more to the plot, I enjoyed it and read it quickly. This is a debut novel and I look forward to more from this author.