Who Got Liz Gardner

Author: Elizabeth Allen
ISBN: 978-1-84923-888-5
Publisher: You Write On
Source: BookPleasures
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When Liz, a financial planner, logs onto her high school website in hopes of generating new business leads, she finds herself landing inadvertently in a chat room full of her male classmates and former lovers. The twenty year flashback and random question “Does anyone know who got Liz Gardner?” throws Liz on a trip down memory lane, full of the good, the bad and the ugly and ultimately answers the question “Who got Liz Gardner?”

Who Got Liz Gardner is a work of fiction that is described as “embellished memoirs” by the author herself. The trip that answers the question “Who got Liz?” is an emotional journey through Liz’s past. The journey includes the detailed and graphic self exploration of Liz’s dysfunctional and sexual relationships and escapades. Liz journeys through her emotional baggage from a rough childhood and comes out on the other side healed and refreshed, determined to break the chain that her mother and grandmother have set, though they did the best they knew how. The journey is painful yet rewarding as Liz sticks to her personal codes and goals so that she can find true and lasting love. Liz deals with divorced parents, abortion, infidelity, love triangles, stalkers, countless sexual escapades and unfulfilled relationships while learning and growing along the way. In the end only one man truly go Liz Garner, the rest just had various levels of taste testing.

This book review comes with a fair warning of explicit sex and language use. If this content will offend you or is not your cup of tea outside a steamy scene or two, do not pick up this book. While it is a story of overcoming severe obstacles due to a harsh childhood and evolving into a better example for her own children, Who Got Liz Gardner is 520 pages that mostly deal with sex and the many partners of Liz. While Liz learns from each encounter, there are many, many encounters and escapades that are usually graphic in nature.

That warning aside, Elizabeth Allen does a wonderful job in regards to her writing style and grabbing the reader’s attention. I finished the novel very quickly considering its size. She grabbed my attention and kept it with an easy flowing storyline. Before I knew it the book was over. The author does a good job of keeping the story fictional in nature. While she admits to using some personal life experiences, the book doesn’t feel like a memoir. I don’t have any aversions to reading the graphic sexual content that encompassed most of this book, however novel had a lot more than I would prefer. What wasn’t sex was self exploration, discovery and life lessons learned.

Overall, the book was a quick and enjoyable one time read. Due to the content and subject matter this book holds no re-read value for me. The writing style was great, the story embellished and platonic with occasional deep issues and lessons learned. I enjoyed the novel but felt it was empty until the very end, it doesn’t fit the coming-of-age label for me as most of the book takes place when Liz is far past the coming-of age range. I felt sad for the main character throughout most of the book. I was very happy for her ending and her ability to achieve her goals and come out on the other side. If you’re able to read a novel with this content I suggest you pick up a copy of the book or borrow it from your library.