Then She Was Gone: The addictive psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

Gosh this book didn’t disappoint. It kept me glued to its pages! It’s an incredibly sad story. Thank goodness Laurel and Poppy found one another. So well written. Deep characters and a full bodied plot. 5 stars all the way!

I am a mess after finishing this one. I had so many different emotions running through me whilst reading it and I've come away with so many thoughts.I really enjoyed the way this was written from each person's perspective. I felt there was some extra scenes that weren't needed as the story itself was so good and I wish there had been a bit more suspense on who Ellie's kidnapper was overall I really enjoyed it!!

"Looking at it backwards it was obvious all along. But back then, when she knew nothing about anything, she had not seen it coming. She had walked straight into it with her eyes open."Fifteen year old Ellie Mack: a golden girl with a glowing future, excelling at school, madly in love with her first boyfriend, cherished youngest child of loving parents. Ellie has everything to live for. But Ellie is gone. She simply disappeared one day in 2005, never to be seen again. She was last seen checking her reflection in a car window, on her way to the library. And then she was gone. No clues, no sightings, nothing. The police eventually conclude she has run away, but mum Laurel never believed it. Ellie had no reason to leave home, and every reason to stay.Ten years later, Laurel hasn't slept properly since 2005. She's lived alone for seven years, waiting for news that never came. Finally, some news does arrive, but far more questions than answers remain.... especially when a new man, Floyd, comes into Laurel's life. Laurel's determination to uncover the truth at all costs, interspersed with snippets from the past and from the points of view of other characters, makes for a seriously enthralling read.I really don't want to say anything more about the plot; I began this book knowing very little about it, and it was a real voyage of discovery. Knowing more than a very little would spoil it, I think. Missing-child thrillers are ten a penny at the moment, of course, and I approach them with a degree of trepidation (it's a subject which can and sometimes does go badly wrong) but this is something special.Then She Was Gone is an incredibly compelling, addictive read. The story drew me in right from the start and didn't let go till I emerged out the other end, feeling broken, emotionally wrung out, my head full of the characters and story. (Then I had to go to work, and attempt to function normally!)There are some great characters here - including one utterly monstrous human being - and all are convincingly drawn. I was especially able to relate to the character of Laurel, who is far from perfect but profoundly driven to learn the truth about what happened to her daughter - as I think any mother would be.Make no mistake: parts of this book are unremittingly dark - heartbreakingly so. Certain scenes and themes were very upsetting, and packed a massive emotional punch. Honestly, much as I enjoyed the book, I don't know if I could bear to read it again for this reason. I finished it this morning and I still felt tearful now.(Lisa's acknowledgements at the end describe her fear, having written the book, that it was simply too bizarre, and her editor's radical and brilliant suggestion to balance out the bizarreness. I'd love to know what that suggestion was!)We expect nothing less than an excellent read from Lisa Jewell, but she's surpassed herself this time. I think this story will stay with me for a long while.Review also published on my blog.

Creepy at times and definitely a good read!

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of fiction and crime books. I couldn’t wait to see what the ending was and even when I thought I had figured it out, there were still more plot twists I did not see coming. Lisa Jewell is clearly amazing at writing.

I found the story and the characters interesting. It held my attention and I read it fairly quickly. I enjoyed the characters and the relationships.

One of those books you couldn't put down from start to finish. Some parts were predictable, others not so much. Either way, it's a good read

Having read several of Lisa Jewell’s previous novels I have come to expect an engaging and well-written story that draws the reader in, flows effortlessly and features ‘real’ characters with heart that hold a readers attention. Unfortunately whilst I found Then She Was Gone easily readable I cannot say that much of what unravelled was either vastly original or well-disguised. In fact the synopsis for the novel and the first fifty-pages together will be enough for most readers to fill in the blanks. I believe that this is the first of Jewell’s attempt at turning her hand to a darker and more unsettling storyline and all in all it felt a little off, slightly warped and, at times, very unsavoury. Perhaps if this aspect had been executed a little more seamlessly then that would have translated to creepy and suspenseful, but as the inconsistencies and questions in the readers mind grow it never quite manages to convince.Then She Was Gone opens ten years on from the disappearance of fifteen-year-old ‘golden girl’ and overachiever, Ellie Mack, having gone missing just days before her GCSE exams on a routine trip to the library. For her mother, Laurel, is was to be the start of something that has never ended and ripped a hole through her life and at the age of fifty-five she has split from husband, Paul and has a superficial relationship with remaining daughter, twenty-seven-year-old Hanna (the difficult middle child) and rarely sees her twenty-nine-year-old son, Jake. After two years the search was downgraded and Ellie chalked up as a runaway by the police but Laurel knows that would never have been the case and has never stopped hoping. Then, after ten years of no substantive leads human remains identified as Ellie’s and her backpack are found close to the ferry port in Dover. For Laurel this is an opportunity for closure and a chance to feel her way back into a life that ended the day Ellie vanished and she effectively stopped functioning as a mother to Hanna and Jake and a wife to Paul.It is several weeks after Ellie’s funeral that Laurel meets Floyd Dunn, a charismatic single father with a twinkle in his eye and a very flirtatious tone. There is something of Paul about Floyd from his dress sense to his kindness and Laurel quickly finds herself swept off her feet and subsumed into his life which centres around his nine-year-old daughter, Poppy, who is the spitting image of Elise at that age and reminds Laurel so much of the daughter she lost. Brilliant at maths, with a dry sense of humour and a maturity surpassing her tender years, idolised by her father and clearly as infatuated by him, the experience is enough to send Laurel on a renewed search for answers to just what did happen to her beautiful Ellie. As Laurel slowly learns more about Poppy’s unconventional upbringing and home-schooled life with her father, she recognises a child desperately in need of a mother... and then Laurel stumbles upon a tangential connection from her life of ten years ago with Floyd and Poppy’s world and it is enough to send her into a obsessive search for the truth of her daughter’s disappearance.In the main the narration is largely supplied by Laurel (with the now perspective) and Ellie (from ten years previously) aside from a few interludes from a more sinister voice (which felt contrived and I cannot say worked for me). Jewell has an abundance of experience with portraying credibly flawed individuals with believable redeeming features but on the evidence of her efforts in Then She Was Gone her attempt at recreating a nutjob was significantly below par! Lisa Jewell handles a dual ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ timeline with consummate ease and the switching back and forth is deftly done and feels incredibly natural. Occasionally with such dual timelines the constant transitioning can be somewhat jarring for the reader, but it is testament to Jewell’s expertise that even in a story which never hit the spot or connected with me, the unravelling was exceptionally well done.As Ellie’s story unfolds in one timeline, alongside this the reader sees protagonist Laurel struggle to put her finger on where her feelings of disquiet are stemming from, but the fleeting connection between a time when Ellie was at home and glimpses into Floyd and Poppy’s past is enough for a newly positive Laurel to face the consequences of her journey. Despite Laurel being somewhat blinkered and a little slow on the uptake concerning Floyd and their fortuitous meeting I found her sympathetic and realistic. It was refreshing to hear her acknowledge her responsibilities for the distancing of her family and her contrasting attitude to both Ellie and her two older children, in particular Hanna who she is overly critical of and appears disappointed with for simply not being Ellie. Indeed it was the story of the Mack family and their evolution back to a complete blended family that genuinely seems well-explored with a realistic dynamic.The let down for me is with Lisa Jewell’s characterisation of both the unbelievably articulate and ludicrously precocious nine-year-old, Poppy, a far too slick Floyd Dunn, not to mention the mentally insane character (Noelle) who connects the two families. Likewise, it was the dialogue of Noelle and Poppy that proved such a sticking point for me and was neither terribly realistic or convincing and had me cringing on many occasions. Poppy speaks like an over-educated forty-year-old and she is extremely self-possessed and all in all this feels a little unsettling and conjures up images of brainwashing! Also the relationship between Floyd and Poppy has rather too much of the Oedipus complex about it and in all honesty turned my stomach.So, whilst Then She Was Gone is a decent read and far better than some of the more recent and frankly ridiculous psychological thrillers saturating the market place, it holds very little in the way of surprises for any savvy reader and relies on a sequence of unlikely coincidences. I didn’t find this an emotional read as it all felt a little too artificial and implausible for me, from the sentimental ending through to the good grace with which the unfolding revelations seemed to be received. All in all Then She Was Good is an immersive and very readable character driven family drama and offers an insightful look at a family reuniting after the tragic disappearance of one of their number.Given the wealth of editorial support at Lisa Jewell’s behest, I do think that advising her on the scientific specifics of aspects of this book would have proved beneficial (rate of decomposition of a human body to skeleton form being just one of them).Review written by Rachel Hall (@hallrachel)

Intriguing from the start. Well written. Very good character development. It was, intresrtingly enough a feel good book for being a very dark story. I recommend it for a weekend read.

First book I have read by this author and I quite enjoyed the characters, the plot and the ending

This book catch up out attention from beginning to the end. Awesome. I was just wondering a different endpoint but that was a incredible experience to read this book

Mystery, romance,thriller all in one book!Amazing author A MUST READ THRILLER ROMANCE BOOK

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