THE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER! Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen, the youngest of three. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenaged golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic post-exams summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now, her mother Laurel Mack is trying to put her life back … Mack is trying to put her life back together. It’s been ten years since her daughter disappeared, seven years since her marriage ended, and only months since the last clue in Ellie’s case was unearthed. So when she meets an unexpectedly charming man in a café, no one is more surprised than Laurel at how quickly their flirtation develops into something deeper. Before she knows it, she’s meeting Floyd’s daughters–and his youngest, Poppy, takes Laurel’s breath away.
Because looking at Poppy is like looking at Ellie. And now, the unanswered questions she’s tried so hard to put to rest begin to haunt Laurel anew. Where did Ellie go? Did she really run away from home, as the police have long suspected, or was there a more sinister reason for her disappearance? Who is Floyd, really? And why does his daughter remind Laurel so viscerally of her own missing girl?
“Jewell teases out her twisty plot at just the right pace, leaving readers on the edge of their seats. Her multilayered characters are sheer perfection, and even the most astute thriller reader won’t see where everything is going until the final threads are unknotted.” —Booklist, starred review
“More than a whiff of The Lovely Bones wafts through this haunting domestic noir…Skillfully told by several narrators, Jewell’s gripping novel is an emotionally resonant story of loss, grief, and renewal.” —Publishers Weekly
“Sharply written with twists and turns, Jewell’s latest will please fans of Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, or Luckiest Girl Alive.” —Library Journal
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I almost have no words to this describe this book. Suspense and thriller don’t seem enough. Lisa Jewell wins the prize for this book. I was utterly unsettled reading this. It is definitely a page turner and one that will absolutely make you question society and human interaction. There were many times I was unsure of who the bad characters and good characters were. If you love a haunting, page-turning uncomfortably realistic story, this is definitely a read for you!Lisa Jewell Lisa Jewell
”A man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.”
This book is just brilliantly bizarre as the author said herself!
While reading this book, there was this disturbing feeling I can’t explain, it was so weird. Sometimes I was just reading it not completely understanding what was really happening.
There are 5 parts, I really loved that about the book, and how you get a glimpse of each main character’s point of view until everything was revealed like what really happened from the victim and the culprit viewpoint as well and oh my god even though it was predictable (for me) I was kind of stunned.
This book got me thinking real deep, I feel like it’s something that could’ve happen in real life. Also while reading it, it invoked a trust issue in me(). I don’t even fully know how to express myself about this book. It’s just uncharacteristically strange.
This book was unsettling! It left me not knowing how to really feel about it. I’d highly recommend it.
The story is told from the very different perspectives of various characters throughout, gradually revealing what happened when teenager Ellie Mack went missing without trace several years earlier. Ellie’s family are understandably thrown into turmoil and her disappearance and the subsequent lack of closure eventually lead to the breakdown of her mother, Laurel, and father, Paul’s, marriage. Laurel’s relationship with her remaining two children, Hanna and Jake, is similarly damaged. Paul remarries, but Laurel is unable to re-build her life until she meets the charismatic Floyd, whose young daughter, Poppy, bears a remarkable resemblance to Ellie. Things finally seem to be looking up for Laurel as she becomes romantically involved with Floyd. But not everything is what it seems. There are twists aplenty and a conclusion which, although alluded to, is still shocking. Deeply tragic and disturbing, but also oddly life-affirming, this is a wonderfully compelling read. Highly recommended.
Then She Was Gone had me in its grip from the opening pages.
Beautifully written. Wonderfully expressive. Evocative. Sensory. The characters and places are intricately described and as a fellow writer found myself taking notes.
I did however think that it was too long and felt frustrated at times, but still, couldn’t stop listening.
This was such a good book I have now looked up the author to follow and read her other books.
Great book!!!
I’m often disappointed by contemporary mystery and thriller bestsellers. The characters are flat and unengaging, the writing is often heavy-handed, as if the author is telling us through a bullhorn what we’re supposed to feel. Many writers jack up the action to make up for a lack of depth, like a bad guitarist turning up his amp to try to bowl us over with power because he doesn’t have the skill to win us over with substance.
I read a lot of older mysteries, not because earlier eras magically produced better books, but because after the publishing hype machine dies down and a book is left to survive solely on its merits, the bad ones sink and the good ones remain. If a book has been in print for fifty or sixty or a hundred years, it’s because several generations of readers have found reasons to like it.
After so many disappointments with contemporary “unputdownable must reads” and “stunning masterpieces,” it’s refreshing to find a book like Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone. A male author would have a very different take on the story of a girl who disappears. What would she need? Why, a hero, of course. It would be a story of good guys versus bad guys, with the girl being what Alfred Hitchcock called “The MacGuffin,” the thing that everyone is after. Whether it’s the Maltese Falcon or the Flux Capacitor, the intrinsic value of the MacGuffin is irrelevant. Its purpose is to advance the plot.
In Jewell’s case, the girl in question, Ellie Mack, is embedded in a tightly-woven social world, at the center of which is her mother, Laurel. Ellie’s disappearance tears an irreparable hole in the fabric of that world, leaving a wound that affects every aspect of her family’s life.
Jewell doesn’t dwell on the trauma, but she weaves its effects through the story. It colors Laurel’s perspective on everything and affects her in ways she’s not even aware of. Because we see people and events from Laurel’s perpective, we don’t understand that some of what we’re seeing is distorted until Laurel herself becomes aware of the distortion.
Jewell is particularly good at describing the shifting dynamics of interpersonal relationships, and the subtle underlying feelings of guilt, desire, envy, love, joy, and anxiety that shape those dynamics like currents in a living sea. Her characters are perceptive and aware, with an evolving self-awareness that makes them richer and deeper than most. Their lives, like ours, are made up of mundane details, imperfect relationships, small annoyances, predictable frustrations, and unexpected triumphs. And somehow they all amount to more than the sum of their parts.
The bulk of the story takes place ten years after Ellie’s disappearance. Laurel is still unsure of her daughter’s fate, still looking for closure. Early on, the reader gets a general idea of what happened to Ellie. The picture sharpens as the story unfolds, with the reader getting a few more details than Laurel, who is slowly beginning to put the pieces together.
If this were a straight mystery/thriller, it might be classified as a procedural, since the reader knows what happened well before the end, and much of the story’s second half focuses on the detective (in this case, Laurel) formally connecting the dots. In a traditional procedural, the payoff is justice. The bad guy is caught and put away.
Jewell’s novel is more complex, more personal, and more ambitious. The unwinding of the case parallels the unwinding of Laurel’s deeply wounded psyche. The payoff doesn’t take place in the criminal justice system, but in the mind of the aggrieved. The process of emerging from grief is deeper and more complex than a police booking and a jury trial.
The author obviously spent a lot of time with her main character. She knows Laurel well. Jewell’s skill as an author lies in her ability to portray a rich and nuanced character in all of the varied contexts of modern life: family, work, public, friends, dating, solitude. She also tells a really good story. If you haven’t read this one yet, put it on your list.
I only recently discovered Lisa Jewell’s fabulous writing and have been voraciously consuming her back list. And Then She Was Gone is one of my favorites. The story centers around a horrid crime that took place in the past, when Laurel Mack’s beloved daughter, Ellie, disappears without a trace. Divorced and distanced from her surviving children, Laurel meets the charming Floyd and soon embarks on a relationship with him. When she meets his daughter, Poppy, she is taken aback by the similarities between the young girl and her missing daughter.
Full of twists and turns, the reader goes on a journey with Laurel as the truth about Floyd and Ellie and his daughter Poppy comes to light. This is a story about a woman grappling with the most egregious from of tragic loss. And although the story carries shades of crime drama, Lisa Jewell’s inimitable exploration of emotion around tragedy makes this story sing. Full of evocative imagery and gorgeous prose, Then She Was Gone is a five-star read. Highly recommend
Once the momentum started in this book, it was hard to put it down and I stayed up and finished it at 1 a.m. While the plot was pretty obvious, the emotional zingers in the last few chapters really got me and I closed the book with tears in my eyes. I’m not normally a cryer so four big stars for slamming home the feelings in the end. I could see how some might have a hard time connecting to Laurel, but I believe she was written cold on purpose as her emotional ARC involves just that.
Floyd is the right doses of ‘too good to be true’ and a little creepy and there were times I wondered why Laurel kept going back to his bed, but it worked overall and I’m glad I read this book even if the Trigger Warnings of child abduction are sometimes hard to read.
If you like thriller booka this will not waste your time,Happy reading.
The author wove the characters like someone knits with silk—every stitch a perfect foundation for the next row. I couldn’t stop reading until the last page. Excellent story. It was tragic. There is a HEA of a sort. You’ll need the whole box of tissues. Be brave.
This was my first Lisa Jewell book and I loved it. I was really captivated by the story and finished the second half of the book in one sitting because I just had to know how it ended.
I figured out the majority of the ending pretty early on and there wasn’t really a twist or a major reveal to surprise me at the end although there were details that I hadn’t figured out.
It was really interesting to see how my feelings towards various characters changed throughout the book. I’m sure it was Lisa Jewell’s intention to take the reader on this emotional journey and write in a way that causes the reader to question character’s motives and then feel empathy when new secrets are revealed. I would love to read another Lisa Jewell book.
Twisty and page turning, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending. Guessed most of the twists 2/3 of the way through.
This was quite the mystery with a surprising ending. It was a quick read with plenty of twists.
This book gutted me! I was taken on a roller coaster of emotions throughout, and it kept me on the edge of my seat.
I couldn’t even imagine what this family went through- it all seemed just so out there, but I loved Laurel, and the relationship that she formed with Poppy.
I will definitely look for more by Lisa Jewell!
I’ve read and loved a few of Lisa’s newer books, so I’ve been trying to work my way through her back catalog, and overall I enjoyed this one. This is going to be kept vague so I don’t spoil it. I like how she introduced different characters and then allowed them their own chapters to give a complete picture of what was going on. It’s also told over two periods in time which I enjoy.
I wasn’t put off that I suspected someone right from the start because finding out how to get to that point was a lot of fun. Whenever I read stories of parents who have had children go missing, the thing that hits home is that the worst part is the not knowing. That really hits home here with Laurel. All the characters, from the good to the bad, were well written. If there’s one thing I didn’t like was a bit of easy cleanup regarding a pregnancy. Perhaps things can be done the way Jewell writes, but it doesn’t seem feasible to me. Then She Was Gone starts with a bang and continues with a dark and suspicious tone. Overall it was a fun read that hooks you from the start.
Then She Was Gone is an incredibly gripping novel from Lisa Jewell, and she is definitely one of my favorite authors.
I managed to figure out the majority of the book, but that didn’t put a damper on my excitement or take way from how fast-paced and interesting it was. I love Jewell’s writing style and at this point I’d literally read anything she wrote even if it’s not a book. Then She Was Gone is disturbing and it will make you angry (especially with wondering why the cops would have missed looking into certain people), but it was an intriguing read that will keep you on your toes, especially if you don’t figure out the book like I did!
I love the way this author can tell a story and I think that’s the reason I liked this book so much. Plus the chapters switching between ‘then’ and now’ on top of them being super short made the book even more captivating. I read it in basically one day and I can tell you it’s a hard book to put down.
Then She Was Gone is very suspenseful and creepy, and a lot of readers will probably appreciate that it isn’t gory. The book definitely makes you wonder about what surprises are in store for you. While I generally like books more twisty than this was, it was still a fantastic read that I will be recommending!
Thank you to the publisher for my advance review copy via NetGalley. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Fantastic
It was a good book, well-written. Maybe it was me, but I predicted the rest of the book from about the 1/4 mark.
I enjoyed every page.