Review for "Then She Was Gone" by Lisa Jewell

 What an absolutely revolting reveal :))

Read: 01/14/2024

Then She Was Gone had me gripped right from the beginning. We start out knowing that this woman Laurel's daughter disappeared ten years ago and the police finally find evidence of her death after over a decade. I was confused at first at why the very first chapter had Ellie narrating her abduction, but it soon becomes clear that this disappearance is not the main focal point of the story. At least not yet. Fast forward ten years: Laurel has a new boyfriend whose precocious young daughter has uncanny similarities to her own late daughter. This is when the plot really gets good.

After we meet Poppy, I really thought it was going to be one of those The Bad Seed stories where the child is evil, but I couldn't make the timings work. After approximately nine times of being told how similar Poppy and Ellie are, I did end up figuring out the plot twist. It's completely disturbing in a can't-look-away-from-a-car-crash type of way, and I was very invested in Laurel's mission to uncover the truth.

This is the third book I've read from Lisa Jewell and I do notice a pattern. She is very good at sucking you into the mundanity and suburbia of the characters' lives. As the perspectives change and information is revealed, I find myself anxious for the characters' reactions, and I genuinely want them to succeed. That is a writing skill that not every mystery/thriller author has, so I will give her massive props for that. Also, despite being able to guess the plot twist, I did find the plot to be very unique and interesting.

All that being said, I will say that the negative aspects of the author's writing are also consistent. The main (really, the only) critique I have of this and her other books is that she gives away the twist too early. In this case, I was able to easily guess that Ellie was Poppy's birth mother and that Noelle abducted her for that sole purpose because it was revealed much earlier that SJ had seen Noelle without a baby bump. If that fact had been hidden for a little bit longer it would have made figuring out the twist more satisfying. This is almost identical to the problem I had with Watching You. For that reason, None of This Is True is still my favorite of the three books I've read by this author, but this one is still very engaging and overall entertaining.

Final verdict: The intrigue, unique plot, and atmosphere of the book are only slightly dampened by the plot twist being given away too early in the book.