Then She Was Gone: From the number one bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

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But I couldn’t see how the book could end any other way? How could I send this story out into the world without a happy ending? It would be far too depressing. Far too bleak. Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and the ending was very touching and satisfying for me. Would recommend! You know, how you get to forty and you suddenly stop giving a sh** about all the stupid things you worried about your whole life. Well, nine year old Poppy is already there."

This could be Jewel’s first tentatives steps towards advancing up to the literary thriller category. I was impressed with this novel as it held my rapt attention from start to finish. It gave me goosebumps in more ways than one. For this review and our full Traveling Sister review please visit Brenda and Norma’s fabulous blog: Laurel takes Poppy to meet Joshua and see her old house. Poppy is hesitant, but then eager to meet her relatives. However, she refuses to enter the basement, saying she was told never to go down there. Her mom had told her there was a monster there. And within this stranger was the essence of everything that mattered to me and the potential to take a can of petrol to it, to blow it all to ash and rubble. A woman goes to the police. She's found a note hidden in a book she got from a used bookstore. The author of the note is Ellie. She writes about Noelle keeping her captive. She says she loves her family and for someone to find Poppy and tell her she loves her.Ellie, a conscientious teenager, and the apple of her mother's eye, left to visit the library and was never seen or heard from again. Laurel, Ellie's mother, couldn’t understand how her other children and her husband were able to move on with their lives without knowing what happened to Ellie. Laurel's life stalled, her marriage fell apart and the relationship with her two remaining children is strained.

While there are a few key plot twists, there weren’t any that really caught me off guard. There’s a few instances of plot points where seems like the book is pointing in a specific direction, but since it’s a mystery, I kept expecting to be wrong about it. When it turns out it’s exactly what you think it sounds like, that’s a little disappointing. The characters are very ordinary people. They are not rich, nor particularly successful. They don't marry millionaires and live happily ever after. They are ordinary people with ordinary worries who have ordinary awful things happen, and who react like I imagine that I, or any of my friends, would react should a child of mine go missing. And in this very 'ordinaryness' Jewell creates compelling characters that we come to love and empathise with, and addictive reads. The interesting fact is the way of disappearance of Noelle reminds of her the way of disappearance of her own daughter. Ellie was fifteen eager to take her exams. Now that she had been tutored in math she was sure she would do well. On her way to the library one evening, she disappears. Her disappearance takes a huge toll on the family, a family that breaks apart as many families in this type of situations often do. Now ten years later, Laurel is willing to take a shot at having a life and love again a series of events will send her reeling. Would she finally find out what happened to her daughter?Thank you to NetGalley, Ariele Friedman, Atria Books and Lisa Jewell for a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I love strongly character driven novels, including thrillers and that is what Ms. Jewell does so so well. I became invested in the feelings of Eliie’s mother, and as a mother of four daughters, I wanted so badly for things to somehow turn out that this poor woman didn’t have to continue without knowing what happened to her missing beautiful, intelligent, golden girl! Because, Noelle, I don’t think you ever really understood how much I loved Poppy. It was more than love, it was blood and bone, fibre and matter, the beginning and the end. Poppy was my creation, my muse, my angel, my universe. I couldn’t, I simply, simply could not live without her. I’m on board with her editor on this one. I think the ending that’s in the book is more realistic than the alternative ending. I can see why she’d want to write it that way to give it a happier ending, but I think the ending that her editor steered her towards makes more sense. Read it or Skip it? This is not a cliched version of fiction with a bunch of peripatetic perfunctory characters with a mandatory twist at the end to consider it as a thriller. I was able to predict the ending by around 30% in the book. This book is the tragic life story of Ellie, which will bring tears to your eyes if you are a compassionate human being.

From Laurel's perspective, in the present) Laurel calls an old number she has for Noelle. Joshua Donnelly answers. Noelle is his aunt, but no one has heard from her in a while. He's never even met her, even though he lives in her old house now. Joshua shows Laurel the basement, where there's a sofa, tv and a bunch of hamster cages where they found a bunch of dead hamsters. Laurel also finds a tube of lip balm that matches ones Ellie had. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Noelle gets pregnant but loses the baby. Around this time, she starts tutoring Ellie. She becomes obsessed with Ellie and her seemingly perfect life.I can do it,’ she said. ‘I can go home and I can tell my parents that I ran away and that I’ve been living in a squat. Or a commune. Living rough. Hand to mouth. Moving from place to place. I’ll tell them that I lost my mind. That the stress of my exams made me go mad for a while. I’ll tell them that I’ve been lost and that now I’m found. And I won’t, I swear, I won’t tell them about you or about Poppy. I swear. And I promise.’