Review: Save What's Left by Elizabeth Castellano
Save What’s Left by Elizabeth Castellano, narrated by Thérèse Plummer, explores what it's like to find yourself after a marriage crumbles and you are retiring to a beach town. Kathleen Deane moves herself from Kansas to Whitbey on the recommendation of her childhood friend, Josie. Castellano has created a realistic town with ordinances, rules, and inept officials, as well as nosy neighbors and corruption.
Deane is clearly a person who doesn’t know what to do with herself without her neighbor Rosemary’s guidance, but despite this guidance, she finds herself embroiled in town politics and bureaucracy and at the center of a financial mess. Her nit-picky attitude toward everything in town and her neighbors demonstrates her inability to find purpose and contentment in her own life.
What I loved about this novel is that it doesn’t make beach town life look like a dream. It’s a town with real problems and warring neighbors. It also depicts a woman adrift as her marriage falls apart and she finds herself without purpose. Throughout, you wonder what kind of town this is — where every move you make is scrutinized.
In each episode, readers are treated to quirky neighbors, officials who are disconnected, and a family that is broken by Tom Deane’s decision to leave his marriage to “find himself.” In some cases, it all becomes overkill or repetitive, but it is a fun journey. Overall, Save What’s Left by Elizabeth Castellano is an oddball novel about forgiveness and finding what truly makes us happy — or maybe just content.
RATING: Quatrain
About the Author:
Elizabeth Castellano grew up in a beach town. She lives in New York. Save What’s Left is her debut novel.