A review by teeclecticreads
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

dark sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This was a 2.5 star read for me personally. I had so many qualms with this book:

• It was easy to figure out the mystery behind Ellie’s disappearance. I even have a sticky note that I put in the book just to go back to it and prove myself right. Though I must say, the finer details did have me feeling very uncomfortable and kinda sick to my stomach. That’s superb writing right there, because some people in this world are actually that sick and twisted.

• Why was American English being used in a book set in the United Kingdom?? That was such a pet peeve for me as someone who uses British English. If they’re in England, it should be ‘humour’ not ‘humor’.

• Most of the characters were extremely annoying to me. Laurel constantly shat on Hanna and kept comparing her to what Ellie was, Poppy didn’t feel like an accurate description of a 9 year old to me. Her language and behaviour felt quite mature. Painting Floyd as this story of ‘doing it to protect my daughter’ guy then with the suicide thing was so not cool. He doesn’t get to be felt sorry for. What he did was creepy and wrong. Then Hanna getting with and marrying her dead sister’s ex was really just kinda gross to me

• I hate ending. I really do
it doesn’t make sense that the letter was written by Ellie if she wasn’t allowed to leave the cellar at any point. How would she have been able to do that? That’s a huge hole in the plot line

I just overall was not a fan of this. Disappointed
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