And Then She Was Gone

  

 

I have to say this before I start my blah-blah: how many similar books are there?
Authors Christopher Greyson, Luca Veste, Rosalind Noonan, Lorhainne Eckhart, J. Daniel Sawyer, to name a few, have a book with the very same title. When I looked for the cover, I found two different covers for the one book by Lisa Jewell. Needless to say, confusing!
This is the kind of things that won't help readers find the book or recognise it!

 

It's a gone-girl story, you guessed right. It was entertaining, and I found myself wanting to understand what happened, wanting to not predict the plot as I went along, and let the book take me where it wanted. At times, when my lips pinched, I would wonder how what I was reading would make sense in the final climax. 

Things that I found plausible:

• The crazy looser of a tutor, undermined and craving recognition from other people, while never giving herself an ounce of self love. The premeditation, the obsession with every single step. Yes, it works.
  

• The kidnapping. We saw it in The Lovely Bones (if you're interested, the screenplay is here), -- and I think Ellie, the kidnapped girl in Lisa Jewell's story, has read the book, as it is mentioned at some point -- Indeed, it is easy to take the wrong decision in a split second. There are many ways Ellie could have avoided her terrible fate, but she walked into that darn house.
  

• The new love, why not? Up to a certain degree, maybe 10 pages in, I thought it could just be fine. I thought Lauren, despite her ramping cynicism, could find love again. Why not? She does not look like she deserves it much, but, hey, who am I to judge?
  
  
• The note in the second hand book. Yes, that can be. A friend of mine came to Thailand because of her brother's unexplained death, and as she was buying second-hand books, she found a book with a note in her brother's hand-writing. So, yes! I do believe!
  
  

Things that made me cringe: 

• The cousins, nephews, whatever... The woman disappears and her relatives move in? She was estranged but they somehow find the keys and just decide to call it their home? OK, granted, had they not been there, we would not have seen the gloomy cellar, Laurel would not have found the lipgloss, but still, the interaction with those guys was a bit like the hair in the soup.
  
  
• The pregnancy. Mfff! Really? That was weird. Imagining Noelle going in there and... How? I mean why? I mean... Eeww!
  
  
• The hamsters? I know they don't require a lot of care, and they eat each other, which simplifies the abandonment situation. But, hamsters? Really?
  
  
  

What I liked

I liked the title at first but then realised it had been over used. I had a personal wishful expectation that Ellie was going to be alive in the end.

What I did not like

Well, first of all, the fact that -- even though it would have been super cliché -- Ellie did not escape. That sucked! She was intelligent, she would have overcome the trauma of miraculously being a teenage Mum with therapy etc. I had it all worked out...

I really really really (really!!) disliked the changes of point of view. I am so tired of this, seriously. I get invested and then, bam! I have to go and inhabit someone else's mind. After a couple of chapters of this back and forth dance, I stopped caring. Check it out: we were juggled in the skins of Laurel, then Ellie, then Noelle, then Floyd, on repeat. Come on, people! That's like four different books in one! Why? I could have managed if I had liked the book enough and with only two points of view max, (see Five Feet Apart), but in this case, I became annoyed. Laurel did not find out some elements (why Ellie, how Poppy was conceived, how Ellie died...), because we already knew it from another point of view. She was left guessing it out from the clues she got. All she knew for certain, through a note left in a book, is that Ellie, despite the horror of her situation, was fine and loved everyone (until her bitter end or not, Laurel will never know). How is this enough?
A mother would need to know everything to get closure, woudn't she? Inheriting her lost child's look-alike should not be enough, in my opinion.

The difference in the love Laurel has for Ellie and her two other children bothered me. Is it because Ellie went missing? Would she have also been distant to Ellie if she had grown up with them? Do parents have a favorite kid in the family. Argh! That bothers me! Laurel never went the extra mile to support them like a Mum should. OK, she was traumatised, but I did not read anything to prove a super bond between Laurel and Ellie in the opening chapters. So, I did not care much for Laurel.

The end felt rushed. It seemed to me that it concluded like the movie would. We've got our ending, kill the bastards, wrap it up and "The end!". Anyway, at that point, I was grateful for the liberation.  

Then She Was Gone is not a book I would read again, Still, happy I did, so I know what all the rattle is all about.
Happy readings!