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Things You Leave Behind
“What am I supposed to be doing?” One year out of college and already disenchanted with adult life, Angela Brooks decides to go on a treasure hunt. Things do not go according to plan, as she wakes up a decade in the future with no memory of the years in between. Now, it's up to Angela to figure out where she is, when she is, and even who she is.
- GenresFiction
175 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 13, 2019
2 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
M.L. Kennedy
5 books22 followersML Kennedy writes about the spooky and the mundane. He has released a rust-belt travelogue/vampire novella called The Mosquito Song, as well as a short story collection called Thanksgiving for Werewolves and Other Monstrous Tales through Tiny Toe Press. Kennedy has a blog where he writes stories in exactly 100 words. You can find out more about those and his slightly longer stories at wbxylo.weebly.com
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 2, 2019
ML Kennedy has written a complete knock out with Things You Leave Behind. From the clever retro-book-cover-as-a-VHS-tape to the ok-seriously-wtf-is-going-on-here twistiness of it, he hooks you straight on and refuses to let go.
The book starts "somewhere near the middle", with Kennedy courageously plopping us smack dab in the midst of something we have not yet been exposed to. It's jarring and disorienting but also, as the novel continues to thrust us forwards and backwards in time, pretty fucking brilliant. We don't understand what we're reading at first but when that veil begins to lift, holy shit you guys. Watch out. Kennedy is like a goddamn magician.
Razzle Dazzle biatches!
The book starts "somewhere near the middle", with Kennedy courageously plopping us smack dab in the midst of something we have not yet been exposed to. It's jarring and disorienting but also, as the novel continues to thrust us forwards and backwards in time, pretty fucking brilliant. We don't understand what we're reading at first but when that veil begins to lift, holy shit you guys. Watch out. Kennedy is like a goddamn magician.
Razzle Dazzle biatches!
April 11, 2020
I had no idea what to expect. Something happens in this story, and you never get an explanation that hits like a slap. The explanation comes, goes, and you live with it. What I really wanted to happen happens: people connect with each other and become part of each other's lives. The beauty of the tale crept up on me. Thank you, M.L. This was lovely.
September 29, 2019
This is a good book and you should buy this book because it is a good book.
The reasons for that would spoil it, but it manages to be a time travel ghost story mystery and the answers for it are more related to the human condition rather than cynicism for dramatic purposes or for horror or shock value. It's rare to read a book that manages to surprise and stick in your head for a bit, and this does that.
Good book. Buy good book.
The reasons for that would spoil it, but it manages to be a time travel ghost story mystery and the answers for it are more related to the human condition rather than cynicism for dramatic purposes or for horror or shock value. It's rare to read a book that manages to surprise and stick in your head for a bit, and this does that.
Good book. Buy good book.
October 24, 2019
Thanks to the author for the free copy in exchange for my honest review
First, lets all agree that this cover is awesome. Plenty of people thought I was carrying around a VHS tape whenever I’d take it out of my bag to read it. THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND is different than what I was expecting it to be. We get a really indepth look at our characters – this becomes a character study without losing the momentum of the story. Most of the time when books focus more on the character development, the pacing can begin to slow down, but I didn’t experience that with Kennedy’s book.
Angela Brooks feels like she’s stuck. Nothing really is going the way she wants it to and she isn’t sure how to get out of this rut. Her college friend convinces her to go on this treasure hunt for a ring. One day, she wakes up but she isn’t herself, she’s actually in the body of a young boy. How did she end up like this? What happened to the years she’s missed? How does she get things back to normal?
We go back and forth between timelines and as the story progresses we get a new layer to Angela and her life. The alternating timelines keep you turning the pages to see where this will all culminate. I wasn’t expecting that ending – which is always fun! Overall, a solid read and I really enjoyed getting to know the characters so well.
First, lets all agree that this cover is awesome. Plenty of people thought I was carrying around a VHS tape whenever I’d take it out of my bag to read it. THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND is different than what I was expecting it to be. We get a really indepth look at our characters – this becomes a character study without losing the momentum of the story. Most of the time when books focus more on the character development, the pacing can begin to slow down, but I didn’t experience that with Kennedy’s book.
Angela Brooks feels like she’s stuck. Nothing really is going the way she wants it to and she isn’t sure how to get out of this rut. Her college friend convinces her to go on this treasure hunt for a ring. One day, she wakes up but she isn’t herself, she’s actually in the body of a young boy. How did she end up like this? What happened to the years she’s missed? How does she get things back to normal?
We go back and forth between timelines and as the story progresses we get a new layer to Angela and her life. The alternating timelines keep you turning the pages to see where this will all culminate. I wasn’t expecting that ending – which is always fun! Overall, a solid read and I really enjoyed getting to know the characters so well.
August 22, 2019
I still remember the thrill of intrigue I felt the first time a polar bear turned up on Lost. The story was already bizarre; I’d been introduced to the wreckage of an airplane, an unseen monster, and a cast of untrustworthy characters with compelling backstories. By the time the polar bear turned up, I was hooked for the long haul: these were mysteries so inscrutable that I couldn’t hazard any explanation myself. I’d have to stick around to get the answers I now craved. I stuck around for all six seasons and, like most loyal viewers, was finally disappointed by the result.
Puzzle box mysteries, as they are colloquially known, distinguish themselves from the horror and crime stories from which they have evolved by a commitment to blowing your mind. First they draw their audiences in with a complex story riddled with situational shock-and-awe, and then they knock you over with a perfect resolution that ties up these dozens of tightly knotted threads. The typical questions speculative stories pose (what supernatural horror is lurking in the sewers, or who is capable of murder most foul and why?) are upended by a secondary thrill: will the writers stick the landing? Will the ending make sense? And often, as in the case of Lost, the ending does not. It falls, perhaps, somewhere between incomprehensible and disappointing.
Puzzle box mysteries have done well in the era of prestige TV, attracting devoted followings that they sometimes alienate with disappointing endings, from True Detective to Westworld. Their literary inspirations tend toward the bizarre avant-garde, with as far-reaching sources as Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, Ambrose Bierce’s An Inhabitant of Carcosa, or Julio Cortazar’s Hopskotch. It makes sense that the literary predecessors are a bit less spotty in their execution: an novel is plotted all at once, whereas television has to accommodate an unpredictable number of seasons, changes in the cast, the whims of producers, and so on. And yet, puzzle boxes of all flavors face the same dilemma: is the resolution worthy of the mystery? Again: will the ending make sense?
Through the first half of M.L. Kennedy’s new novel Things You Leave Behind, I was convinced that I was reading a puzzle box mystery. As with Lost — which I feel has to have been an inspiration here — the story begins in media rez with exotic and impenetrable circumstances: a world-weary proletarian protagonist somehow triggering inexplicable time-travel via a haunted lighthouse, in the midst of flashbacks and flashforwards, and surrounded by characters that accept, or at least entertain, the extraordinary in our world. Kennedy’s deliberate invocation of these puzzle box tropes is not coincidental, nor are they mere homage… they define the structure of the story and the way a reader progresses toward the enlightenment of revelation.
And yet, the greatest reveal of Things You Leave Behind may be that it is not a puzzle box story at all. Kennedy sticks the ending by sticking the beginning: by establishing readerly expectations that are then subverted when we realize that this is really a story about character, about reconciliation, about understanding the limits to our ability to understand. Never have I found a novel-length character study disguised in such an exquisitely surprising costume. Unlike Lost or True Detective, the philosophic ruminations are not born of a need to expediently wrap things up, but they are clearly woven into the dialogue, the action, and the structure throughout. And as the mystery contracts, the universe of the story continues to expand. We hear the wry banter of characters who know that they are caught between life’s banalities and its tragedies. We recognize the impossibility of making meaning from events somehow both random and relentlessly cruel. And we hearken to the isolated moments of catharsis and joy that present themselves through an unwatched movie or a carton of eggs or a conversation with a friend we haven’t seen in years. In the end, Things You Leave Behind has much more in common with Camus’ The Stranger than it does with your typical puzzle box mystery.
And a bonus: The characters are more likable.
Puzzle box mysteries, as they are colloquially known, distinguish themselves from the horror and crime stories from which they have evolved by a commitment to blowing your mind. First they draw their audiences in with a complex story riddled with situational shock-and-awe, and then they knock you over with a perfect resolution that ties up these dozens of tightly knotted threads. The typical questions speculative stories pose (what supernatural horror is lurking in the sewers, or who is capable of murder most foul and why?) are upended by a secondary thrill: will the writers stick the landing? Will the ending make sense? And often, as in the case of Lost, the ending does not. It falls, perhaps, somewhere between incomprehensible and disappointing.
Puzzle box mysteries have done well in the era of prestige TV, attracting devoted followings that they sometimes alienate with disappointing endings, from True Detective to Westworld. Their literary inspirations tend toward the bizarre avant-garde, with as far-reaching sources as Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, Ambrose Bierce’s An Inhabitant of Carcosa, or Julio Cortazar’s Hopskotch. It makes sense that the literary predecessors are a bit less spotty in their execution: an novel is plotted all at once, whereas television has to accommodate an unpredictable number of seasons, changes in the cast, the whims of producers, and so on. And yet, puzzle boxes of all flavors face the same dilemma: is the resolution worthy of the mystery? Again: will the ending make sense?
Through the first half of M.L. Kennedy’s new novel Things You Leave Behind, I was convinced that I was reading a puzzle box mystery. As with Lost — which I feel has to have been an inspiration here — the story begins in media rez with exotic and impenetrable circumstances: a world-weary proletarian protagonist somehow triggering inexplicable time-travel via a haunted lighthouse, in the midst of flashbacks and flashforwards, and surrounded by characters that accept, or at least entertain, the extraordinary in our world. Kennedy’s deliberate invocation of these puzzle box tropes is not coincidental, nor are they mere homage… they define the structure of the story and the way a reader progresses toward the enlightenment of revelation.
And yet, the greatest reveal of Things You Leave Behind may be that it is not a puzzle box story at all. Kennedy sticks the ending by sticking the beginning: by establishing readerly expectations that are then subverted when we realize that this is really a story about character, about reconciliation, about understanding the limits to our ability to understand. Never have I found a novel-length character study disguised in such an exquisitely surprising costume. Unlike Lost or True Detective, the philosophic ruminations are not born of a need to expediently wrap things up, but they are clearly woven into the dialogue, the action, and the structure throughout. And as the mystery contracts, the universe of the story continues to expand. We hear the wry banter of characters who know that they are caught between life’s banalities and its tragedies. We recognize the impossibility of making meaning from events somehow both random and relentlessly cruel. And we hearken to the isolated moments of catharsis and joy that present themselves through an unwatched movie or a carton of eggs or a conversation with a friend we haven’t seen in years. In the end, Things You Leave Behind has much more in common with Camus’ The Stranger than it does with your typical puzzle box mystery.
And a bonus: The characters are more likable.
April 5, 2020
Good, if a little short, book full of great idea which in many cases could have taken a little more exploring. Some twists and turns involved which mostly drop you into uncharted territory and take a little getting used to, but the friendly writing style never leaves you totally behind.
Could be developed further with the possibility of a following book which would really grab me.
My chair was a little uncomfortable, so maybe that has something to do with the loss of a star.
Could be developed further with the possibility of a following book which would really grab me.
My chair was a little uncomfortable, so maybe that has something to do with the loss of a star.
October 3, 2019
Great characters, funny at times, cool nostalgia, and an intriguing story that kept me turning pages. I've read other books by this author and they are always witty as hell. This is ML Kennedy at his finest. I was sad when the book was over, but it's the kind of story that sticks with you long after you are done. It's magical how Angela and Tyler's memories stick with you...
July 15, 2022
This book was fantastic! The concept was unique, and I loved the chapters being broken up as back and forward in time. Very clever. Great story that kept me engaged and looking forward to the next time I picked up my Kindle.
September 19, 2020
Strange
Certainly one of the oddest books I've read, but I enjoyed it. Now I want to find out what happens to to the characters.
Certainly one of the oddest books I've read, but I enjoyed it. Now I want to find out what happens to to the characters.
October 15, 2019
Must Read!
This book sneaks up on you. The beginning is kinda like starting a lawnmower. It sputters and pulls. But once the engine gets going it roars like a 70 Hemi Cuda. This is a story that will stick to your memory and imagination.
This book sneaks up on you. The beginning is kinda like starting a lawnmower. It sputters and pulls. But once the engine gets going it roars like a 70 Hemi Cuda. This is a story that will stick to your memory and imagination.
May 20, 2025
This book has stuck with me for years. Every so often it just creeps back into my mind. I suggest it to anyone looking for a good genre story. I’d love to see it adapted for the screen.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews