Summary:
It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place―until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.

Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel’s writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought.

A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from.

My Thoughts:
Overall I enjoyed this book. I thought the narrator did a wonderful job. The story flowed nicely for the most part but was a bit slow at times. It has some heavier subject matter, so please check content warnings. One of the topics the book attempted to deal with was the subject of consent. However, I feel like the conversation or Isabel’s feeling on what happened never actually occurred, at least not in a meaningful way. Isabel also has an affair with her married professor. People have compared to My Dark Vanessa. I don’t agree with this comparison. My Dark Vanessa was such a dark and uncomfortable reading experience. This book did not give off that same feeling.

On the surface this book should be everything I love: campus literary fiction about sexuality, young female characters, and reckoning with parental death. However, I found the narrative voice to be... impersonal? Despite the heavy subject matter, the story felt very surface level and detached. The writing was still of good quality, and entertaining enough to keep me reading, however, this story didn't make much of an impact on me and I doubt I'll remember much about it in a few months. As far as the narration goes, the narrator was really great and I enjoyed her performance.

In her final semester at an elite New England university, Isabel begins an affair with a married professor and reflects on her relationships with the men in her life. Taking place in the late 90s with the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, My Last Innocent Year explores consent and power imbalances. This is the type of story that will stick with you long after reading.

My Last Innocent Year follows Isabel Rosen’s final semester of college. We follow along as Isabel experiences some hard-hitting issues: loss of a mother, a non-consensual event with a fellow student, an affair with a professor, and domestic violence of another professor.

I neither loved nor hated My Last Innocent Year. Although this book hits us with some heavy subjects, I just didn’t feel the impact of them as much as I expected to.

The loss of her mother is, obviously, a theme that runs through the whole book and although Isabel flashes back to earlier moments with her I never really completely felt that loss. However, we all experience loss in different ways so I didn’t get too hung up on this.

Next we have the night with her fellow student where the non-consensual encounter takes place. This encounter was said to leave Isabel “reeling”, but I feel like this night had more of an impact on the people around her than it did Isabel herself. Although the night did leave her questioning things we didn’t really see a lot of how this truly impacted her and that left a pretty big hole in the plot(for me).

Next week find Isabel become infatuated with R.H. Connelly - a poet and her writing professor at Wilder college. This idea of the book was actually the reason I kept reading the book. Isabel’s affair with Connelly is where I felt that we actually learned the most about her - her longing to be accepted, her need to be wanted, what morals she held, and a huge part of who she really is.

I felt like this book threw a lot at us, but that we didn’t get as much depth as some of the subjects needed. This was a wonderful idea, I just needed a bit more(especially with the non-consent subject as it such a BIG topic).

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ARC. My Last Innocent Year was a beautifully poetic coming of age story. I found the writing to be powerful and heartbreaking at the same time. I really enjoyed this audiobook and the narrator told the story wonderfully.

This was my first read by this author and I already wish to read more!

Small college in New Hampshire. The story starts off with our main character experiencing something she hesitates to call rape.

From there it follows her through the rest of her senior year. She falls into a situationship with a married professor, witnesses the dramatic ending of another professors relationship, and makes plans for her future.

The story takes place during 1997 and 1998, with the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton situation, playing out in the background. Overall the story explores themes of consent, power imbalances, and repercussions.

Isabel is a student at Wilder college in the late 90’s. While she is a senior, she is raped by another student she had thought was her friend. Shortly after while she’s grieving her mother’s death, an affair with a married professor who pays special attention to her starts. The complicated feelings she experiences and her vulnerability to manipulation are explored.

With the backdrop of the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, this novel closely examines the subject of consent. The comparison I keep seeing to My Dark Vanessa is an unfair one in my opinion. They are different women with different stories. I thought this was well written and I liked that Isabel was able to reflect upon all of these events later on in life when she spoke from present day. I also believe it’s an important point that it isn’t only young, virginal girls that fall victim to manipulation and abuse of power. I felt this was a lovely debut and the narrator on the audio version did a good job voicing the story.

Thank you to @henryholtbooks @macmillan.audio @netgalley for an early copy of My Last Innocent Year.

I am so thankful to have received a #gifted copy of this ARC from both @HenryHolt and Daisy Alpert Florin before its publication date of February 14, 2023!

This was a hard one to read, as a woman, written in the time before the Me Too movement got its footing before the 2000s hit when small colleges like Wilder existed and frequently employed power-hungry professors who manipulated young women into a competitive perversion, building years of repressed trauma and insecurity into their being.

Accolades called My Last Innocent Year "hot" and "dirty," and it was both of those things from an emotional standpoint because there IS always that fantastical trope of younger students pining over the mature, vanilla professor. Still, kinks aside, it feels like a violating dance. These women are on the cusp of figuring out what they want to do in their post-grad lives. They cast out friendships and financial responsibilities for a few minutes of sexual attention from their older teacher.

That's precisely what happens in My Last Innocent Year, as Isabel Rosen falls in love with this brand-new writing seminar professor, submitting to touch and willingly/"consensually" participating in this affair, but also knowingly accepting the fact that if this secret were to get out, it could ruin her future.