Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

This is my fourth book in the recent months with a strong taste of weirdness. It was clearly written this way so it’s a feature, not a bug. I read None of This Is True earlier and liked it very much. These books are told in a way that we have a central awful and terrible event that’s uncovered through eye witnesses who live their normal lives. So it’s mostly ordinary stuff that happens but then here and there we have extremely unsettling and definitely not ordinary events and problems. Like horror story red flags randomly thrown in innocent conversations.

The plot goes around the disappearance of a highschooler and the devastation dealt to her family. The mom doesn’t give up on trying to find what happened to her daughter but does she even have any contribution to the story? And what really is the story here? It’s not at all that clear.

I gave the book 4*/5. Similarly to the books by Freida McFadden, I do not feel particular satisfaction reading weird books but at the same time appreciate the ingenuity. So I’d be happy to check another book by Lisa Jewell but may need a gap of a few months or years before I do so. This book was exhausting.

I finished it last week and damaged the book a bit. I hope the library doesn’t mind and accepts it as a donation. I would not like keep it on my shelves or remember about it.