The blurb for ‘Then She Was Gone’ by Lisa Jewel definitely grabbed my attention and always willing to try authors I haven’t read before i was quite intrigued to find out what this book had in store. I am thrilled to say I wasn't disappointed at all, this book was more than I expected.

This book provided twists and turns as we get to know Laurel a mother who struggles to cope with the disappearance of her teenage daughter Ellie. Told mostly from Laurel’s point of view we get to see the drastic affects that Ellie’s disappearance has on her family and what happens through the years.

Going back and forward from the time Ellie vanished to ten years in the future the book flows well. Although there were a few bits you might be able to guess along the way there is enough going on to keep you gripped and guessing to the end. This was a great introduction for me to the work of Lisa Jewel, I will be looking out for more.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fabulous read - heart warming despite the content and all down to the way the author has painted the main character's in the book, even the ones you don't expect to empathise with..

An interesting story, enjoyed the relationships between the characters, lots of twists and turns leading to a nice ending that wrapped up the story

What a gripping read, had me on the edge of my seat for most of the book. Such a great read which I will recommend to everyone. So well written I can totally empathise with Laurel you feel her grief at the start and you totally become invested in the outcome.

I thought this was a great thriller. The plot was cleverly thought out and the writing very believable. Ellie, age 15, went missing 10 years ago, in London. Recently some of her remains were found and her parents Laurel and Paul finally have some closure. They are now divorced and Laurel leads a quiet, single life. One day she meets Floyd and they begin a relationship. Laurel meets Floyd's ten year old daughter Poppy and she immediately thinks how much the child looks like Ellie. But then Laurel thinks this a lot. When Laurel finds out that Poppy's mother is Noelle, who was Ellie's maths tutor, she begins to have her suspicions that Floyd knows more about Ellie's disappearance than he is letting on! Read on!

Devastatingly sad, utterly brilliant.

Its your worse nightmare losing a child. Not knowing what has happen to them, not having the closure you need to move on. And that is how Lauren feels when her daughter goes missing. 10 years later she finally finds out Ellie's fate, but in the meantime her world is not the same as it was before. Relationships in her family are fraught, things can never be the same ...

Then Lauren meets lonely single parent – Floyd, and the story of how Ellie disappeared is about to unfold before her eyes. Truths will finally be told, twists will be round the corner and love will conquer.

I absolutely adored Lisa’s new novel, it was different to her others, but still wonderful and totally gripping. I couldn’t put it down until I knew all the truths. I cried, I smiled, my gut twisted and knotted and I felt so sorry for what this family endured. But never the less the story was wonderfully written, poignant and special. I highly recommend this. 5 out of 5.

I had not read any bills by Lisa Jewelprior to this but will go ontotry another. I did think it was still inchick lit format to begin with but did evolve into a more suspenseful format. It had its twists and turns along the way so I am leased I carried on with it. A smouldering start that develops momentum to a late crescendo. A touch of Stockholm syndrome with all the ends neatly tied up .review will be onGoodreads

Reading this book made me appreciate my family a lot more. I can’t imagine having a family member disappearing and living in oblivion for ten years. How does one do that? And the finding out what really has happened. It is not fathomable that a human being can do such a thing to a girl and live with it. Thrilling and impossible to put down, this was a great book and I highly recommend it. I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK!

This is a wonderful book written beautifully.
Lisa Jewell keeps you on tenderhooks right to the end which means you can't put book down
Laurel Mack the mum in the book reacts exactly how many of us mums would when her daughter goes missing, but the author entagles everyone in the story it is any mums worst nightmare

In the days I participated in more blog link-ups with US/European book bloggers and reviewers I often heard about books by Lisa Jewell - who I assumed was American, but discovered is English! Her most recent books in particular, sounded to be exactly the sort of books I enjoyed - romantic suspense. 

For reasons unknown Jewell's latest book is my first and I'm glad I finally got around to reading something by the popular author. 

I enjoyed this book and read it in a night, but do think it was pretty obvious what happened to Ellie from the beginning and why Poppy looks so much Ellie.

I'd be surprised if readers DIDN'T guess what happened / how it came to be. I note Jewell's author's note about the book being a bit twisted and her editors having to talk her down from the ledge a little. I have to admit I would have liked a bit more of a twist, as I felt as I was kinda waiting to get what I knew confirmed and then move on to the intricacies of the fall-out and exactly who knew what.

Because I think that is this book's strength - we spend much of the book wondering: what Floyd knew; and / or what Floyd did. And - of course - what will happen now?

I did wonder, as I said, if there was going to be some extra twist and I guess there was in a way as the conclusion pans out (ultimately) in a pretty unexpected way, which I found exceedingly sad but didn't take away from my enjoyment.

I adored Poppy though I'm not sure I'd cope with a real life version of the somewhat precocious 9yr old. Laurel sums her up. 

"Poppy is clearly a strange child, who is both charmingly naive and unsettlingly self-possessed. She is cleverer than she has any need to be, but also not as clever as she thinks." 29% through novel

Laurel however was hard to warm up to.

"Laurel has always been a glass-half empty type of person. She could find much to complain about in even the most pleasant of scenarios and could condense the joy of good news into a short-lived moment, quickly curtailed by some new bothersome concern." 3% through novel

She also felt like the mother-from-hell. She seemed like a nice person but the comments she made about her kids (and we know she meant them because we're in her head) are a bit horrendous - admitting (to us) her regret that it wasn't her older daughter who disappeared. Hanna.... who describes as her 'difficult' child and her 'tiring' one. And someone she wouldn't want to be stuck on a desert island with. And in the present she thinks of Hanna's life as 'miserable' and mentions that neither Hanna nor her brother have 'set the world alight'.

I do realise, however, that she's anointed Ellie as the golden child and if she'd not disappeared then her glimmer might have dulled a little for her mother.

There were some obvious questions of logic in terms of the plot itself... when Laurel became suspicious, why didn't she go to the police, do some sneaky DNA tests? For example.

My only other grumble was a change in points of view towards the end when we switch to first person in the present (to a new character)... which was a teensy bit confusing initially.

I guess I would have liked for Ellie's fate not to have been quite as obvious but gather Jewell wrote it in a way that we were meant to know what happened and wonder: if Floyd and Poppy's appearance in Laurel's life is just coincidence, or something more sinister; which makes this an intriguing read.

I should also mention there's a sadness or wistfulness about Ellie's story. I mean, that's a no-brainer, but even Ellie talks about the 'kinks' in the timeline and moments at which - if she, or others had done something differently - her fate might have changed.

For many years, I didn’t read Lisa Jewell books because I had in my head she wrote romance novels. I am not sure where I got that from but, thankfully, a review on one of her books finally showed me the light and I have been working my way through her back catalogue ever since, loving each one. Seeing a new release on Netgalley then I couldn’t resist requesting a copy.

On the surface, Then She Was Gone sounds like a story I have read more than once over the last few years. A young girl goes missing, her family falls apart in the aftermath, whilst all the while there are questions to answer – where did she go, why did she go, will she ever come back? The difference here is how well Lisa Jewell writes, how she builds up the story piece by piece, revealing just enough to keep you interested but not quite enough for you guess what is coming next…each time I thought I had the answer, I was wrong (until the end, when I have a feeling Jewell wanted me to figure it out!).

Here, the book is told in parts, with the reader getting to hear different voices at different times and the story moving between the past to the present. Central to each part is Laurel, the mother of the missing Ellie as she embarks on a new relationship with Floyd, whose daughter looks remarkably like Ellie. It’s hard to know where her interest in Floyd is in the man himself or his daughter as Laurel works through her feelings at the same time you do.

I really liked Laurel, she was kind, caring and human. She was damaged by losing Ellie and it had definitely impacted her life since she had gone missing, including her relationship with her other children, but she seems able of understanding this. She isn’t completely tunnel visioned, which made her behaviour feel real. She, along with the other characters, I found really well drawn, something Jewell always does well.

In fact, I’m not sure there isn’t much, if anything, she doesn’t do well. This book is well written and well plotted and there is nothing in it I would change. Loved it!

This story begins ten years ago with Ellie, a fifteen year old with a very bright future and quite simply her mother's golden girl, one day Ellie tells her mother, Laurel that she is going to the library to study but doesn't come home. When the police start to investigate they discover she never made it to the library but, with no sightings of her, they quickly decide that she must have run away.

Fast forward 10 years to the present and Laurel has never accepted that Ellie just upped and left and won't settle till she gets closure. She meets Flynn in a cafe one day and they become close, when she is introduced to Poppy, Flynn's 9 year old daughter, she is shocked at her resemblance to Ellie at that age, but considers it's just a coincidence. Unfortunately, it reopens a myriad of questions that Laurel wants answered.

This is the first book I've read by Lisa Jewell and I ask myself why has it taken me so long to discover this exceptional author. I read this book in less than a day, Lisa has a way of drawing in her audience and captivating them completely till the very last page. I was totally hooked and have since discovered I have five other books by this author on my tbr pile which I will definitely be reading very soon!

I would like to thank Random House UK Cornerstone for approving me to read this book and I will post my review on Amazon and Goodreads.

Okay, my overwhelming reaction when I finished this book was, 'wow, I have just read book of the year'. I kind of know my contenders when I read them and this kind of slipped right in there. It's a novel that grabbed me straight away and I couldn't leave the book alone.

Laurel Mack's seemingly happy 15 year old daughter leaves the house one morning to go to the library and doesn't return....

As one can imagine from that premise this isn't always an easy book to read. It is heartbreaking to imagine a parent's love for their child and that child's love in return being ripped away, never knowing what happened, feeling powerless that they couldn't stop it. Jewell really tugs at the heartstrings and yet it doesn't feel sentimental, or as a reader did I feel I was being manipulated into evoking emotion. It's the amazing characterisation that makes this work.

The author had another barrier to overcome with me. I have a pet hate of 'nice middle class family with perfect children' in novels. This sounds a bit sick but I often WANT bad things to happen to this perfect model family and struggle to sympathise. However, what Jewell does is make each and every character human. They are not perfect, they seem real.

On one level the story is of Laurel and her inability for her to recover from her daughter's disappearance. It captures her life as it turns into an existence and shows us how dysfunctional her life has become of work, eat and sleep. Her relationships with her other children are at arm's length and cold in spite of everyone. Her marriage has broken down and we have an image of a sad, person whose life has gone.

And yet, joy tries to enter her life when she meets a new man. I love the transformation of Laurel. It isn't easy and it doesn't come overnight but I really enjoyed how my feelings changed over her. At the start of the novel I had the image of a beaten down, dowdy woman whose life was shattered by grief. As the novel unfolds it is clear she is a beautiful middle aged woman who is likeable and importantly lovable. I really liked her and truly felt for her as her bringing her life back together unfolded.

This however, isn't just a novel of recovery from grief, it isn't a 'coming of middle-age' novel (I'm going to trade mark that!). It's also a thriller as we learn what really happened to her daughter Ellie and how Laurel discovers the truth. The book often flits back and forth from the present to the time of Ellie's disappearance and it works well as the story unfolds. We hear Ellie's voice and at times it is really horrible to read the thoughts of a girl who disappeared. About half way through I worked out some of the plot and actually felt a bit sick (in a good way!) as I thought I'd pieced together some of what was going on (thankfully I was only half right). Some scenes in the book are quite horrific, particularly since there is nothing the reader can do about it and we 'know' the truth. At other times there is real suspense as we feel Laurel is walking into danger.

The end just melted me.

So, it's a family drama, it's a thriller with crime and horror elements. It's a story of love and grief, of coming to terms with loss and of recovery. At times the tone is light and humorous, at others it is bleak. You'll feel sadness but also root for Laurel and wish her a happy future.

It all hangs together because nothing feels forced, everything feels natural, the pacing is perfect, the reader is simply told a story and given the time and space to reflect and empathise. Powerful stuff and much better than what I was expecting.

Laurel is a mother of three, but her favourite child, as she often repeats throughout the novel, is the youngest, 15-year-old Ellie so when Ellie suddenly disappears Laurel’s world is shattered. Ten years later, the police still think that Ellie ran away, Laurel and her husband are divorced, and she barely has a relationship with her two other children. When Ellie’s body is found, Laurel can have the closure she has been waiting for and life is on the up when she meets charming Floyd in a coffee shop and is quickly smitten. But when Laurel meets Floyd’s daughter, Poppy, her world turns upside down because Poppy looks exactly like Ellie. As she spends more time with Poppy and investigates what happened to her mother who suddenly disappeared years before, Laurel finally finds out what really happened to her own daughter.

I really loved this novel - the characters are well-developed and the author perfectly portrays their psychology and emotions, especially the grief of a mother over losing her child. I enjoyed the dark, suspenseful and at times emotional plot and the complex characters that make for a brilliant and absorbing thriller.

This is a roller coaster of a book told from lots of different points of view and I like that approach it keeps everything fresh and ticking along nicely.this was quite an emotional story as you would expect given the subject matter and it was a book you could believe in .its the sort of book where you think I'll just read another chapter then you think I want to know what is going on here so you read another one and before you know it its halfway through the night and you are shattered,but its worth it.Very good book and so worth a read.Thanks to the publishers for an ARC and to Netgalley.

Then She Was Gone is a clever psychological suspense about a mother who has never given up hope of finding her missing daughter.

Ellie Mack disappeared ten years ago and the rest of her family, particularly her mother Laurel, have never recovered from the shock. Laurel's marriage crumbled and her relationship with her other children deteriorated until it was non-existent. Now Laurel finally has the strength to move on. She meets a handsome, funny, clever man and begins to fall in love. And then meets his young daughter, Poppy, who is the spitting image of Ellie ...

I usually avoid books about missing children, but the premise of this one intrigued me. As I read the story I thought I had the end all worked out - and I did, to a point. There were some twists that surprised even me. I got about a third of the way through the book, thought I'd just read another chapter before bedtime - and didn't put it down until I'd finished the story at 1.00 am. And then lay awake for another hour thinking about it! It really is that gripping.

I can't say much more because I don't want to spoil it for you. I can't even say it's like a cross between 'x' and 'y', because then you'll work out where the author is going with the story and it will be more fun for you going in without a clue. So I'll just say that if you love well-written psychological suspense you are in for a treat! Recommended!

This was my first Lisa Jewell book and it won't be my last. Loved everything about this book. Written from several view points with a strong sense of family running through the book which added an emotional layer to this psych thriller, I raced through this book. Would highly recommend.

Ellie disappeared 10 years ago. Her siblings have since moved away and her parents divorced. Lauren her mother has always wished it was Hanna who went not Ellie and feels that she is a bad mother for thinking such a thing. The story for the most part is about Lauren, what happened and her life thereafter. Lisa has a talent for getting the reader into the story quickly and keeping you engrossed. This is an intriguing dark tale and one to make you think. An emotional plot that almost had me in tears at the end. I saw part of the ending coming but not all. Fast paced and one you have to keep reading. A very well written , highly entertaining recommended read.I voluntarily chose to read this ARC and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased.

This novel from Jewell is exquisitely written and very atmospheric. This is a masterclass in showing you do not need massive shocks to make a novel exciting. Jewell proves that a chilling, atmospheric read is just as powerful as a thrilling one.
The strong character voices are my favourite aspect of 'Then She Was Gone'. Jewell evokes sympathy for everyone, even the ones who do not necessarily deserve it. Due to the plot this is a very emotional read but it is one full of hope. We see Laurel broken and follow her as she tries to put her life back together, making very powerful reading.
https://mjletstalkbooks.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/then-she-was-gone-lisa-jewell/

I have been a fan of Lisa Jewell’s writing for many, many years and through those years her writing has gone from light-hearted rom-coms via a very good historical fiction book through the shades of grey to Then She Was Gone which is very dark indeed.
Laurel Mack’s daughter Ellie was on her way to the library ten years ago when she went missing. The police believed she’d run away, but there were no sightings and Laurel and her husband Paul disintegrated under the weight of not knowing what had happened to their precious youngest daughter,  a girl who was just fifteen and about to sit her GCSE’s. With Ellie predicted high grades and no known problems at home she is remembered forever as a pretty teen by her parents and her older siblings Hanna and Jake, and if truth be told, she was her mother’s favourite.
What had Laurel’s life been like, ten years ago, when she’d had three children and not two? Had she woken up every morning suffused with existential joy? No, she had not. Laurel had always been a glass-half-empty type of person. She could find much to complain about in even the most pleasant of scenarios and could condense the joy of good news into a short-lived moment, quickly curtailed by some new bothersome concern...
 ...That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.
And then one morning, her girl, her golden girl, her lastborn, her baby, her soulmate, her pride and her joy, had left the house and not come back.
So ten years down the line when Laurel meets a friendly single father in the local café she has got used to her own company, unlike Paul who has a new wife Bonny, Laurel has not been interested in meeting someone new. And then Laurel’s introduced to Paul’s daughter Poppy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ellie.
This is a book where the author gives enough pointers for what you assume is the answer to the main mystery fairly early on in the book and in doing so lets the characters walk off the pages and into your life where you will be hard pushed to forget them easily. But beware, not everything is quite as it seems and this novel turns out to be simultaneously a fantastic tale and yet on the other one that is entirely believable probably because the characters we meet are ones that are so realistic.
The narration is mainly done by Laurel, a woman who you can’t but help to sympathise with for her loss but also we here from Ellie, Lloyd and Noelle a strange but still realistic woman who has links to both families all of which reveal to us aspects of the tale that Laurel is blind to. The change in narrator and time periods are expertly handled and this is a psychological thriller which brilliantly hinges on the characters rather than high-octane action, making for a satisfying read because despite changes genres Lisa Jewell still writes with a sharp eye for details and emotions that we all experience while we are hopefully living slightly less dramatic lives than the characters in this book.
I highly recommend  Then You Were Gone  the perfect book to slip into the suitcase for a holiday read; I will now I sit and wait for Lisa Jewell to write her next book.
I'd like to say a huge thank you to the publishers Random House UK for allowing me to read a copy of Then She Was Gone before publication today, 27 July 2017.