Christine Lennon

Elizabeth is a college girl in the middle of an identity crisis, who also finds herself in the middle of a murder, which haunts her the rest of her life in the form of grief, guilt, and anxiety. The book incorporates elements of a thriller, but is also a moving coming of age story.

The action moves from Gainesville, Florida, to New York City, where Elizabeth moves after a series of murders strike her campus.

I loved the main character, everything about her and her story. She's realistic, show more eccentric, flawed, but thoroughly believable and relatable. The story of her painful journey from traumatized college kid to traumatized married mother is compelling and realistic. The sense of both cities is apparent. I found the narrative very compelling.

The only somewhat weak element I found was the characterization of Elizabeth's two friends and the friendships themselves. Female friendships at that age are complicated and intense, but, at the point at which we meet the three friends, their friendship is strained, and I didn't quite buy their former closeness, even with the scenes illustrating it.

Altogether a great read as we travel through Elizabeth's life with her ghosts, secrets, and growth. show less

This is the story of a traumatized woman who cannot let go of the guilt that she feels over the murder of her best friend 20 years ago.

Elizabeth is a fearful mom to pre-schooler Remi. She can't let go of her watchful perch after dropping Remi off every day at her NYC pre-school, to the point where Remi is in danger of getting kicked out of the school due to Elizabeth's unnatural watchfulness and fearful nature.

But what has made Elizabeth this way? Flashback to 20 years ago and "Betsy" is a show more college student pledging a sorority in Florida. Her best friend Ginni is letting Betsy crash at her place through the summer until Ginni's roommate Caroline comes back to school. All three girls are sorority members, and Ginni and Caroline love the sorority life, however Betsy is seriously considering quitting the sisterhood.

When Betsy eventually quits the sorority and moves into a different apartment, the girls remain friends, although Caroline is caustic and just plain mean sometimes, and Ginni and Betsy are the true best friends of the three.

College life goes on for the girls until college cutie, and known campus drug dealer, Gavin walks into Betsy's workplace one day and they realize they have an interest in each other. The first weekend they spend together will be the start of the rest of their lives, even though they don't realize it in the beginning.

Betsy decides the stress of leaving the sorority combined with the delay of the school year due to a serial killer rampaging around killing local women is just too much and decides she wants to get out of Florida for the weekend, and Gavin is up for a road trip.

While Gavin and Betsy are frolicking together secluded away from the rest of their friends, tragedy strikes back on campus. Betsy can't deal with how close the serial killer has gotten, and makes a rash decision to leave school and move back in with her mom.

Fast forward years later, and Gavin and Betsy are struggling lovers eeking out a living in a cheap apartment in Manhattan, living the dream, leaving their old lives behind. Their relationship has ups and downs, their jobs have ups and downs. Real life, pretty much. Until one day they get pregnant and sh*t just got real for Betsy.

She has to quit her drinking, drugging and staying out all night with no memory of what happened. Maybe a baby is just what she needed. Until something brings her back to the events the serial killer perpetrated in Florida 20 years ago, and Betsy has to decide how to deal with her lingering issues.

This book is well-written and tells an interesting story, even if it does take an ultra-long time to get through the flashback portion that explains why she acts the way she does in the beginning of the story that is present day.

I enjoyed the story, and the ending had a bit of a twist that I didn't see coming. I won this book via LibraryThing. show less

I think that the title is misleading since it is such a small character compared to the main character and the adjustment that had to be made due to The Drifter. Overall, I was very interested in Betsy and how she dealt with the loss of someone close to her and the outrageous friendship she had with another character. Betsy was a well developed character and I enjoyed reading her story

Received via William Morrow Books/Harper Collins and Edelweiss in exchange for an completely unbiased review.
Also posted on Silk & Serif

The Drifter was a dark and thought provoking novel that took me a very, very long
time to get through. The unrelated details throughout this novel added realism to this novel in a way that made this book perhaps a little too real for me and resulted in many "breaks". The details evoked personal feelings that were perfectly related to the experiences of the show more three young friends Caroline, Betsy and Ginny who, although completely unalike, were best friends until the shining future of all three women are changed by one horrific night. I felt connected to the characters by virtue of experience from my own university days. My university days were not spent with sorority friends or even really socializing – but I do remember the excitement and expectation of Frosh Week and drunken nights spent in my mid-20s during a time when I still had absolutely no clue who I would be in life (and lets be honest, the only thing that has changed since those days is my excessive drinking habits!). The Drifter is written in a way that anyone can relate to characters that, written by another author, would be completely unrelatable.

Regardless of what other reviewers have said, the enormous amount of “useless” detail I’d learned about the daily life of our narrator only ensured that the ending of this novel could be understood on a deeper level. The mundane details that made this novel an woefully long read also made me love this novel - the characters, situations and their reactions were real thanks to the realism developed from all the boringly mundane details included by our narrator. I don't think the ending would have been as powerful without he long, plodding journey.

The summer in the early 90s that changed everything was just like any summer in the early 90s. The life of our narrator is destroyed and is forever slightly off axis until she can confront what really happened all those years ago.

My only complaint about this novel upon completion is the thematically depressing and dark narrator who, in the beginning is struggling to ‘fit in” and then spends several decades hiding a secret that slowly tears her sanity apart. The dark and twisted road that Betsy takes towards becoming a healthy individual after her friend is murdered was both difficult to read, and frustrating. I saw enough in Betsy to relate to her plight, but not enough to understand why she would keep such a secret for so many years. I also found it difficult to understand how anyone would continue to be in her life during her spiraling mental state, but perhaps Betsy was a better actress than she gave herself credit.

In the end, The Drifter was a depressing and beautiful novel about friendship, personal discovery and the deeply scarring effects of losing someone as a result of murder. Although many cannot understand the anguish of losing someone in these circumstances – I felt Lennon created a realistic and captivating narration of Overcoming and Acceptance.

I would not suggest reading this novel if you are looking for a quick read. The novel drags and spends enormous amounts of time describing Betsy’s life before and after the murder, her life’s development over twenty years and highlighting her deteriorating mental state. Very little happens for most of the book in terms of moving the plot along. The murder of her sorority sister is the major event of this novel, yet when we learn about the murderer and his fate, it is a side line to the drama of Betsy’s life - which hijacks the rest of the novel until the surprising conclusion. I expected the murder, the catching of the serial killer and the eventual closure for Betsy and those affected would be the focus of this story – but it isn’t. The focus of The Drifter is on a specific person and the effects of violent and unexpected crime has on her life.

Was The Drifter worth reading? Yes. Was is dark, depressing and emotional? Absolutely, but it was also inspiring to see the strength of friendship and the perseverance of the human condition.

This book will appeal to readers who enjoy psychological dramas, novels with deep meaning and rich character development. This novel is dark and deals with sad/uncomfortable situations that can be often difficult to read due to the exceptionally subversive writing style. I would recommend this book to readers seeking a "meatier" read with intense meaning and dark subject matter.

 
**Side note: The Drifter is in part based on true college murders and the author's own experiences in a sorority.
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