Leaving Time is a 2014 novel by Jodi Picoult.
Thirteen-year-old Jenna Metcalf was only three years old when her mother disappeared. She's spent years poring over her mother's journals and scouring the Internet for information about her mother, hoping to find a clue that would solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance. Wanting to take a more active role in searching, she enlists the help of Serenity Jones, a washed-up psychic, and Virgil Stanhope, the now-retired detective who originally took on her mother's case. But what Jenna doesn't realize is that the truth she is looking for may be something she doesn't want to know.
WARNING: This book contains a plot twist that, if spoiled, will ruin the entire book for you. Relevant trope entries will have their details spoiler-tagged, but wiki policy forbids using spoiler tags to hide which tropes the book uses; if you have not yet read the book, you are advised to stop reading here.
This book contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Possibly with Nevvie. Alice can't remember if she pushed Nevvie over or if Nevvie just fell; either way, Nevvie ended up with a cracked skull.
- The Alcoholic: Virgil.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Jenna and Virgil at the end, though Jenna occasionally returns to visit her mother.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Sweet, good-hearted Nevvie. She murdered three-year-old Jenna as a way to take revenge on Alice.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The caretaker that was trampled by the elephant. Subverted; she was trampled after she died.
- Jenna was beaten to death with a rock when she was only three.
- Dead All Along: Everyone, except for Serenity and Alice. Jenna, Virgil, Tallulah, Ralph, Jenna's grandmother...they were all spirits that Serenity was unable to distinguish from living people. Also in an inversion, the book implies that Alice is dead, but she's actually been alive the whole time.
- Decoy Protagonist: Serenity is the one at the center of the story, not Jenna.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Nevvie blames Alice for her daughter's suicide and wants to force Alice to experience the same pain she went through, so she lures Alice's three-year-old daughter to a secluded area and beats her to death with a rock.
- Domestic Abuse: Thomas turns out to have been abusive to Alice.
- Driven to Suicide: Virgil attempted suicide after his detective ceremony. We eventually learn that he succeeded; the Virgil we've been following is his spirit.
- This is also what happened to Grace.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Go read the book again after you learn that almost everyone you read about is dead.
- Foreshadowing: There are little hints to the twist all over the place.
- The waitress at the diner wanting the group to leave. Serenity is the only one actually there; to the other guests, it looks like she's very loudly talking to herself. Also in that scene, Virgil and Jenna don't directly speak to anyone besides Serenity; they let her order their meals for them.
- The ticket agent at the airport who tells Virgil that he doesn't belong there.
- Jenna not having any friends at school. The one friend she used to have, Chatham, was presumably a spirit like Jenna.
- Serenity not being able to contact Alice's spirit. It's because Alice isn't dead.
- I See Dead People: Serenity used to be able to, before she lost her powers. Turns out she can still see them, all over the place - she just can't tell which people are dead and which are alive.
- It's also explained that people who can see spirits are those who can suspend disbelief - young children, mentally ill people, and psychics. A couple of children demonstrate the ability to see Jenna, and Thomas is able to see her as well, which his doctors probably explain away as hallucinations.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Jenna with Virgil and Serenity.
- I Will Wait for You: In the end, Jenna offers to wait for Alice, but Alice tells her to move on, saying that she waited long enough.
- Never Found the Body: Jenna.
- Parental Abandonment: Alice, who disappeared when Jenna was three. Jenna wants to find out why her mother left, and if she's even still alive. The truth is actually an inversion: Jenna was the one who died, not Alice.
- Psychic Powers: Serenity.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: We have the teen without any friends at school, the alcoholic ex-cop, and the washed-up psychic.
- The Reveal: Almost everyone besides Serenity and Alice are dead. Jenna was beaten to death with a rock by Nevvie as revenge for Grace's suicide; Alice ran away after attacking Nevvie and possibly killing her. Virgil committed suicide after his detective ceremony. Almost all of the people Jenna and Virgil have interacted with were spirits themselves. They all disappear once Jenna learns that the tooth they found came from her and remembers how she died.
- Sanity Slippage: Thomas. It culminated in him being sent to a mental institution after his wife's disappearance.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Alice and Gideon's affair is what started the chain of events that led to Jenna's death.
