I'm sorry, it's just a two. Pacing felt off, and some very disconcerting and gratuitous sex. Left me feeling a little yucky. ( )

Wow, this is different from what I normally read. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the pages once I got started it was so hard to put down. I enjoyed reading about her story and how differently people are in this world. I have never experienced some of the things she has been through in my life and probably never will, but her memoirs tell a great story and how she has overcome some really different ways of thinking. ( )

An emotional account of the troubling childhood Susanna Sonnenberg suffered through. Her mother is a liar and a cokehead who uses sex, lies, and drugs to make her way through life dragging her daughters behind her. Then when she is on her deathbed Susanna has to make the decision whether or not to go be by her side after everything she has been through. A miraculous tale. It's unimaginable how someone could come out on top after all of the suffering and misguidance. ( )

Similar to Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle in that it tells the story of a childhood so traumatic that one wonders at the fact that the author actually grew up to have a seemingly normal life, Her Last Death is a compelling, engaging read in that train wreck sort of way. You know that you shouldn’t be fascinated by such horrible events, but you can’t look away. Add to that the persistent questions about what we can and can’t believe because, as Sonnenberg reveals, one never really knows how much of what her mother says is truth, and by extension, how many of her experiences could have been changed or prevented, and you’ve got one hell of an interesting life.

It’s hard to say you enjoyed a book like this because, really, you spend a great portion of it feeling sorry for Susy and angry at her mother, but it is a very good read for a specific kind of reader.

Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog. ( )

Library Journal
( December 01, 2007 ; 0-7432-9108-5 )

This is one of the best memoirs to come on the scene since Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle, though the world of Sonnenberg's childhood is as privileged as Walls's was marked by scarcity and want. With her two daughters, Sonnenberg's single mother, Daphne, managed to remain a part of this rarefied environment by the skin of her teeth, thanks to benevolent grandparents and the occasional contributions of a distant father. But while Daphne appeared electrifying and glamorous to the young Susanna, no amount of good fortune could keep her from descending, lie by lie, addiction by addiction, into as disappointing a figure as the father in The Glass Castle. Susanna's progressive disenchantment with her often abusive mother-Daphne introduced her daughter to cocaine and punched her in the stomach repeatedly for seemingly expressing interest in a new boyfriend-is charted with precise, unsparing, and luminous prose. A heartbreaking yet wickedly entertaining portrait of a magically seductive, immensely flawed mother who fails dramatically as a parent and of a daughter who learns to trust and love others despite an orphanlike upbringing marked by disillusion. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/07.]-Elizabeth Brinkley, Granite Falls, WA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.