A review by ifpoetshadmerch
The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
4.0
I wanted to binge read this all week and finally got the chance to indulge yesterday. Lisa Jewell is quickly becoming an author I trust to write a compelling thriller. Her characters are so unnerving. Everybody is shady in their own way, without being overly theatrical, and the book left me feeling uneasy and off-balance in the best possible way.
One night in 2017, Tallulah goes missing along with her boyfriend, Zach. The couple leaves behind their son Noah, who is not yet a toddler, with Tallulah’s mother, Kim. When Tallulah and Zach don’t return home after a night out, Kim instantly knows something is wrong; neither parent would abandon their child like that. But the trail runs cold, and after a year, there is nowhere else to search… Until Sophie, a detective novelist, moves into town with her boyfriend and finds clues planted in her garden. The search revives and the plot thickens and thickens and thickens.
The Night She Disappeared flips between POVs and time to great effect. It lays a cobweb of clues, and the ultimate solve of the case was very believable. At the same time, the ending felt strange to me. I’m not quite sure exactly why, perhaps it was a change in pacing, but it felt a little disjointed with the rest of the book. 4 star book; 3.5 ending.
One night in 2017, Tallulah goes missing along with her boyfriend, Zach. The couple leaves behind their son Noah, who is not yet a toddler, with Tallulah’s mother, Kim. When Tallulah and Zach don’t return home after a night out, Kim instantly knows something is wrong; neither parent would abandon their child like that. But the trail runs cold, and after a year, there is nowhere else to search… Until Sophie, a detective novelist, moves into town with her boyfriend and finds clues planted in her garden. The search revives and the plot thickens and thickens and thickens.
The Night She Disappeared flips between POVs and time to great effect. It lays a cobweb of clues, and the ultimate solve of the case was very believable. At the same time, the ending felt strange to me. I’m not quite sure exactly why, perhaps it was a change in pacing, but it felt a little disjointed with the rest of the book. 4 star book; 3.5 ending.