Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt

Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt

Pictures of You

by Caroline Leavitt

  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (3):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2011, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

Paperback Original. Two women running away from their marriages collide on a foggy highway, killing one of them. The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life, but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why. As these three lives intersect, the book asks, How well do we really know those we love—and how do we forgive the unforgivable?

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"[T]hough the story stumbles sometimes into too saccharine moments, Leavitt's near bottomless reserve of compassion for her imperfect characters will endear them to readers." - Publishers Weekly

"Whether [they] arrive at happiness separately or together is the question that drives the narrative, and the reader, forward as Leavitt teases suspense out of the greatest mystery of all—the workings of the human heart." - Booklist

"Heartfelt (everyone cries), deft and highly readable fiction." - Kirkus Reviews

"Despite the depressing subject matter, Pictures of You is a thoughtful read that just might encourage you to start saying all those things you keep meaning to tell your loved ones.” - Bust Magazine

"With a tragic story and a cast of highly relatable, flawed characters, Pictures of You is a kind of female version of another novel that revolves around a car accident, John Burnham Schwartz’s haunting Reservation Road." - Venus Zine

This information about Pictures of You was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Louise J

Riveting
Thirty-six-year-old Isabelle is leaving Cape Cod, her husband Luke, has a baby with his new girlfriend. All Isabelle is leaving with is: her cameras, one small suitcase of clothing, and money from the bank. She is heading for New York where she has a cheap, illegal sublet lined up that she can use for as long as she wants and she has her photography business. Driving westbound on US-6 the fog is thick making it impossible to see with headlights so Isabelle turns on her parking lights which provide her with a much better visibility.

About three hours from home, Isabelle very suddenly comes across a car in her lane, stopped and facing the wrong way! A woman is standing outside her car and her little boy climbs out when he sees Isabelle’s car heading straight for them. With no time to stop on the narrow road, she has nowhere to go so she attempts to veer her vehicle around the stopped car. Unfortunately, the little boy begins to run and the mother tries to push herself closer to her own vehicle but Isabelle hits them head-on anyway. We find out that one of the people in the accident dies and the other two live.

I was pulled in and mesmerized from the first page. After we get over the shock of the accident, the book goes on to sort out the lives of four different people. It’s heartbreaking, riveting and deeply moving all at the same time. Leavitt’s ability to write with a realness of life, its people and situations is uncanny. This was a masterfully created and told story.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Caroline Leavitt Author Biography

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World, Is This Tomorrow, Pictures of You, Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines, Meeting Rozzy Halfway. Various titles were optioned for film, translated into different languages, and condensed in magazines.

Her many essays, stories, book reviews and articles have appeared in Salon, Psychology Today, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The New York Times Modern Love, Publisher's Weekly, People, Real Simple, New York Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and numerous anthologies. She won First Prize in Redbook Magazine's Young Writers Contest for her short story, "Meeting Rozzy Halfway," which...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Caroline Leavitt's Website

Other books by Caroline Leavitt at BookBrowse
  • Girls In Trouble jacket

6 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Pictures of You, try these:

  • What Comes After jacket

    What Comes After

    by JoAnne Tompkins

    Published 2022

    About this book

    After the shocking death of two teenage boys tears apart a community in the Pacific Northwest, a mysterious pregnant girl emerges out of the woods and into the lives of those same boys' families - a moving and hopeful novel about forgiveness and human connection.

  • Everything Inside jacket

    Everything Inside

    by Edwidge Danticat

    Published 2020

    About this book

    From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.

  • Conviction jacket

    Conviction

    by Denise Mina

    Published 2020

    About this book

    The captivating, utterly unforgettable new thriller for fans of Killing Eve and The Woman in the Window: A true-crime podcast sets a housewife's present life on a collision course with her secret past.

We have 11 read-alikes for Pictures of You, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Literary Fiction

Browse all Literary Fiction books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    A Pair of Aces
    by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
    Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.
  • Book Jacket
    When No One Else Will
    by Amanda Skenandore
    1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
Who Said...

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.