Title: Then She was Gone
Author(s) Name(s): Lisa Jewell
Published in: July, 2017
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- psychological thrillers,
- dark thrillers,
- unanswered questions,
- missing persons cases, and
- slow mystery.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- loss of a loved one,
- grief,
- psychopathic characters, or
- family drama.
An emotionally layered psychological thriller that mixes grief, memory, and unanswered questions about how a young girl went missing. The story unfolds gradually, focusing on how the past continues to shape the present in unsettling ways, especially for the mother who cannot think of anything except for her missing daughter.
A young girl, Ellie Mack went missing ten years before and while the girl’s father Paul Mack, sister Hanna, and brother Jake had all moved on, it was most difficult for the mother Laurel Mack. The police did their duty and searched for the missing girl through all means possible, but couldn’t find any clue about her whereabouts, until one day, many years later, the police informed Laurel and Paul that they had found remains of a body that must have been their daughter’s, stating that their daughter must have met with an accident and the animals must have fed on the corpse. Ellie’s siblings are now adults and have moved away, Paul’s and Laurel’s marriage ended when Ellie went missing, Paul had moved out to live with another woman named Bonny, and Laurel has been living on her own, barely in contact with anyone else. After hearing about this discovery from the police, as painful as it is for her to accept it, it all starts to feel like a closure. She must now give up all hopes that her daughter might still be alive. The funeral is also done, and the mother finally starts accepting the bitter truth that her daughter is no more.
And one day, unexpectedly, Laurel meets a man her own age named Floyd, at a local diner, and they seem to develop a liking for each other immediately. In many ways, Floyd reminds her of all the good things about Paul; just like Paul, Floyd seems to be a nice man, too. The two start dating, the first date and the second date go better than what she would have expected, and Laurel is finally starting to move on. They have a few things in common: they both have two kids each (ignoring Ellie, who went missing), they both have moved on from their past relationships, the parents of their kids, and Floyd’s home is in the area Laurel’s old house was. But there is even a little more in common: they both have a family member each who “disappeared”. What’s more shocking is that his younger daughter Poppy looks almost exactly like her own daughter Ellie.
Sometimes, the exaggerations feel too frequent and that could make one dislike the characters, as they make a mountain of every molehill now and then. Was this an attempt by the author to initially present the protagonist as a highly paranoid person, who somehow seems to become more chilled later on?
Yes, the plot is seemingly solid. Unfortunately, though, it is as though the entire story has been revealed to us in the first hundred pages. It might have definitely been better if the author saved some of the important tell-tale signs for the second half of the book. As a few people have suggested, connecting the dots is not that hard. And the story is not all that engaging, like you would expect it to be for a plot like this, when you know what to expect. This is what happens when there are not many characters to begin with!
There are not many suspenses either; it’s as though Lisa Jewell herself loses interest in story-telling after building up the hype initially. For some reason, the protagonist in the first few chapters of the book and the protagonist in the remaining chapters are two different people. It feels more like drama and less like a thriller. If you began reading this book hoping for nail-biting mysteries and unexpected plot twists, you may be disappointed. Also, it would have been a better drama if the protagonist’s realizations about how she played a major role in distancing her family members, in the separation of their family, no matter how unintentional, instead of giving very little weight to that part of the story.
But if you could ignore all that, the book is a super quick-read. Despite the book running for over 400 pages, you could easily finish it in a day! And you most likely won’t be thinking twice about any character or the plot once you finish the book and put it aside. Then She Was Gone is worth a read, but not a book, definitely not a thriller that you would fondly remember years later, with your eyes lighting up each time it is brought up. Not something like Gone Girl. You could give this a 3-star rating.
