This is an incredibly beautifully written and poignant story. The pacing was a bit slow at times, but that didn’t impact how enraptured I was by Isabel’s experiences and dilemmas. As someone who is close to Isabel’s age, the social context really resonated and I appreciated that the author wasn’t afraid to take chances and go to some dark places – be advised, the title is quite apt. If you like character-driven novels or are a fan of Sally Rooney’s writing you may really enjoy this one!

I found this novel difficult to fully get into, but towards the 75% mark I became enraptured. The first part of the book was in no means bad, the writing is striking and Isabel’s narrative is poignant and haunting. However at many points this book felt like I was staring at a work of art in that I could see the craftsmanship and appreciate the skill of the creator, but I didn’t really connect to it in any way. This didn’t make the reflections of the book any less fervent, it just prolonged my process of reaching them as I wasn’t immediately hooked.

It didn't feel very cohesive to be honest. I didn't connect with any of the characters and it all felt a bit juvenile. Maybe I would have liked it more like 10 years ago?

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

I feel like Sally Rooney lovers and anyone who enjoys 1990s culture and academia will really enjoy this!

Isabel is a senior in college who finds herself with a steamy and tumultuous affair with her professor. You learn she’s lost her Artist, free spirited mother, her dad never seems to be proud of her, and she’s just trying to write compelling and memorable stories.

This goes to dark places. Trust the title! It’s a coming of age, loss of innocence story that is very well done.

Very reminiscent of Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songridej. If you like that one you’ll like this!

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co Publishing for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a coming of age story focused on the life of a college student. That feels very strange to say. I don’t see the senior year college student as the “coming of age” age. For a college student, she seems very young. Maybe I’m forgetting what it’s like to be a college student, perhaps I just don’t even know what it was truly like to be in her shoes. It seems that a better age would be a high school senior and not a college senior.

Anyway, I did not really enjoy this book. I believe people who enjoy a younger and less mature protagonist will enjoy this book. It just missed the mark for me.

This book is out February 14th, 2023.

This one was a miss for me - it tried to do too much. I didn’t find the characters likeable enough to feel infested in what happened to them - and a lot happens! Set in a college (usually a winner for me - I love college settings), this plot is all over the place. If the author would have chose even two to delve into, the novel would have been so much more satisfying. Great ideas - but the execration fell short for me. Thanks to Henry Holt for the copy. I’m grateful.

This book is like a stroll in the park with a old college friend on a brisk fall morning. The narrative is in real time but it feels like a memory. This is going to feel too slow for some readers but I really enjoyed it. Altogether a solid, pleasant, entertaining 3.75 star read :)

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

I very much enjoyed reading this complicated story about a girl's coming of age in her senior year of college. Set in the 1990's, Isabel Rosen is still mourning her mother's death when she has a nonconsensual encounter with another student. Then Isabel's professor shows an interest in her that leads to an affair and her world is sent into a spin. Set at the same time as the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, author Daisy Alper Florin does a beautiful job of conveying the feeling of a young girl at this tumultuous time. in her life. Though this book may not be for all readers - I raced through it and found it fascinating.

Haunting and raw, My Last Innocent Year explores consent and what it means to “grow up” blurring lines along the way. The writing is achingly beautiful leaving me with a handful of quotes woven into my memory. A true masterpiece debut.

My Last Innocent Year was a really strong debut that I wanted to push a little further. I feel like it just scratched the surface especially when it came to the student/teacher relationship and I wanted more. While I liked the epilogue, I feel like the end of her school year wrapped up really quickly—would have been nice to have had one more confrontation between Isabel and Connelly.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked the setting (mostly at a college), and the timeline. The writing flowed from 90s, past and present. And it wasn’t confusing, the jumping back and forth, sometimes it can be. She took us through time and it was beautifully written. It just flows. The story itself just needed more plot. It’s very character driven. It’s a story of a girl’s last year in college. It’s like she’s in the room with you and telling you about it and then she adds in what she feels about it now or what she learned later on, and that I loved. This is a debut and I’ll definitely be looking for her next book.

It felt like this wanted to be a character study, no plot just vibes kind of novel - but it never went deep enough into the protagonists psyche to make it there. It kept me in the story well enough that I blew through it, but it was more like I was floating above it that actually grabbed & kept there. It feels like it is just on the precipice of something, but lacked the emotional punch it seemed to promise.

This book is raw and real! I like the voice of Isabel because she is so confused and unsure about so much which is so relatable for a college aged protagonist. Especially on the cusp of graduating and needing to make tough decisions about what is realistic and what is a fantasy. Exploring some of the more serious sexual themes was also refreshing. While not a major theme, sexual assault doesn’t always look like they tell you on the news. There’s a quiet resignation that goes on in so many sexual situations where women simply don’t say no…but they’re not saying yes either. Absolutely loved the way Daisy navigates that.

This was difficult and powerful to read. I saw some people mention the main character's unlikability, but that speaks a lot to the annoying nature of society to need women to be these pure, flawless, "perfect" victims before they're worth empathizing with (which sucks). This book excellently shows that unfortunate reality, even through fiction -- just read the reviews.

I loved this, and found it moving but also really hard to read at times. Mistakes and bad choices (on our ends, or other people's ends that end up impacting us) during our youth will often come back to haunt us later in various ways, and a duel timeline is one of my favorite plot devices to convey/show growth or change over time. Will definitely be checking out more from the author.

One of the main critiques I've been seeing for this book is that the main character, Isabel, is unlikeable and hard to empathize with. I think that it was actually really easy to empathize with her, because I feel like the decisions we make in our early 20s are not always the best. A lot of our choices from this period of time come back to haunt us later in life, and I love how the author allowed us to see Isabel in the future and see how these choices affected her life post-college and how she grew from her experiences. I loved how Isabel often had to grapple with her own desire versus doing the right thing, and it made the story that much more compelling and true to life for me.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I thought it was an interesting and intimate coming of age story that deals with many difficult topics, such as consent and domestic violence, in a sensitive way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for the e-ARC.

Beautifully written, but the MC was hard to like and root for. Many hard topics - be sure to check trigger warnings. Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for an early read.

A cliched story about a young Jewish woman's last year of college and all the travails that come with it. Of course she ends up having an affair with her professor/advisor. Of course she wants to be a writer when college is all said and done. But first some growing up to do.
The writing in this novel is beautiful but I just couldn't connect with Isabel Rosen. Even going through some of the same sequences and graduating college in the late 90s, I just couldn't relate. The pacing is good, however, and there's enough going on that interest is kept.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt for this e-arc.*

🪷 My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin🪷

Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for an ARC copy of this novel.

Rating: two stars

What I Liked:
🪷 Jewish representation
🪷 Grapples with the gray areas of consent
🪷 Coming-of-age
🪷 Displays in two different ways how women can be taken advantage of by men in power (the MC and Monica Lewinsky)

What I disliked:
- Future reflections are sprinkled into the book that writes as if it's present tense. These reflections are not separated out making the writing style choppy. For example (this is not in the book just an example of the style) 'I was in my room writing about the night that occurred. Later, as a writer I would learn that these writing sessions were important. I continued writing about that night until 1 am.'
- Too many topics were being tackled at once. Some big events that happened to the main character fell to the wayside for a hundred pages before resurfacing. Almost as if she forgets these things happened to her.
- I didn't feel drawn to any of these characters. I didn't like nor dislike them.


#netgalley #bookreview #ARC #arcreview #mylastinnocentyear #jewishreads

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Sex, nonconsenual sex, grooming, death of parent, death, suicide attempt, depression, grief, physical abuse, emotional abuse, harm of child, man in power taking advantage of younger women, blood, violence, miscarriage

This is not the first book I’ve read with a “teacher manipulates and sleeps with younger student” trope recently, but it wasn’t one of my favorite ones either. I just couldn’t sympathize with the main character. She was insufferable, and everything just happened to her rather than her taking any accountability for her part in it. I did like the literary reference, and the way the author writes, just not necessarily the character herself.

Isabel finally realizes a lot of things her last year of college. She realizes things aren’t always what they seem, but I wondered if she really got it.
She seems disaffected through the entire book. She didn’t seem very attached to her mother and she always referred to her father as Abe.
I didn’t have much regard for Isabel. It seems as if she was just going through the motions and seemed surprised when there were consequences for her actions.