Published in 2017, Lisa Jewell’s 15th novel Then She Was Gone follows the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack and her mother, Laurel Mack, as she learns to cope with life without her ‘Golden Girl’ and how it is okay to move on in life after a tragedy. Then She Was Gone is both a mystery and a domestic thriller that the author has broken up into five different parts with multiple narrators. Jewell manages to juggle each of the unique perspectives with different points-of-view while also bringing them together seamlessly to create a suspenseful storyline, but one that feels predicable. She takes themes such as grief and family dynamics and incorporates them well with various characters that provide some depth to the plot and help move the story along.
Jewell uses the disappearance of Ellie as a way to explore what happens to a family after a child goes missing and then not receiving answers for many years. She shows how differently people experience grief and how that impacts the family dynamic in a way that can become catastrophic to the family unit. Laurel Mack, mother of three, wife, and caretaker is portrayed as a typical mother who has lost her daughter and doesn’t have any answers. Laurel grieves intensely to the point where she pushes her aloof husband away because they are grieving differently and Laurel believes that they need to continue to be sad and not move on with their lives. She also damages her relationship with her other daughter, Hanna, because Laurel makes it clear that Ellie was her favourite and she admits that she wishes that it was Hanna that went missing all those years ago. There is also a third sibling, Jake, who is there but is a very forgettable character. The reader will learn that he is really only part of the story to move the plot along.
As the story progresses, Laurel slowly discovers how for so many years she wallowed in the disappearance of Ellie that she had basically forgotten about the relationships with her other children, and by the end of the novel she has rekindled a friendship with them all. At the end of the novel the reader will learn about Hanna’s wedding and how each of the family members in the Mack family come together and finally feel like a family again after years of being torn apart. Laurel also meets a love interest, Floyd Dunn, and allows herself to finally be happy after years and years of feeling the need to be constantly depressed. But are things too good to be true?
Then She Was Gone lacks themes that make the story feel very predictable and done before. This lack of depth has the reader guessing pretty quickly what is going to happen as the story progresses. Some of the characters feel slightly under developed as well which leads the reader to wonder why some characters are even part of the story. There are a couple of times that a character is solely there for one purpose which in turns brings the plot down slightly because there are some very well developed characters throughout the novel. Even though the story is pretty predictable, and there are some characters that lack complexity, Then She Was Gone is still a very entertaining story where the reader wants to know what’s going to happen even if they have an idea of what is going on. Jewell writes in a way that captivates the reader from start to end.
This is the second novel that I’ve read by Lisa Jewell and while I think she is a fabulous author, and I find her work entertaining, I’m finding that her stories in general can be a tad predictable and not as enriching as I would like. If you enjoy mysteries then you need to check out Then She Was Gone and other works by Lisa Jewell.
Then She Was Gone is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
THEN
She was fifteen, her mother’s golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.
NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.
And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.
Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.
Poppy is precocious and pretty – and meeting her completely takes Laurel’s breath away.
Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.
What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?
Who still has secrets to hide?
I really liked the suspense in the Book of Then She Was Gone….but the weirdest thing.. It repeated Chapters. It jumps from chapter 25 to chapter 31 on page 195. Poor editing or publishing? Never had this happen before.