What's Left of Me Is Yours

A Novel

By: Stephanie Scott

Narrated by: Janet Song, Emily Woo Zeller

"Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." --New York Times Book Review

A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder.

In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.

Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.

Felt like Two Different Authors

This book was longer than it needed to be. Narrator Emily was a fantastic voice and her words were rich and flowed with passion. Janet’s narration was staccato with flat sentences. It felt like two authors. If that was the authors intent, she succeeded but I didn’t care for it. I loved hearing about the justice system in Japan and customs/traditions though.

Something missing

The story and the performance could have been more emotionally charged given the subject matter. Perhaps it is the sensibility of the culture but I waited and waited for the fire but there was none. Even the confrontations fell flat.

nice writing of a boring story

I struggled to finish this as nothing gripping happened. It is a beautiful told tale of love and loss. The differences in the Japanese penal system was interesting, but there wasn't enough to keep me engaged.

Wonderful book

This is a book with such poignancy and depth, I would recommend it whole heartedly.

Dissappoing

I was looking forward to this book as the reviews were wonderful. I'll allow that the print version could be better, since the narration here was simply awful. The voices were so monotone that I didn't even realize there were 2 narrators till I heard the credits at the end. The story itself is not very well written: for such a dreadful crime, there isn't any emotional uptick as it unfolds. For all the narrator's claims of life-long damage, there is no evidence of it. I did manage to finish it, but just barely.