Lisa Jewell has written some cracking books so I was looking forward to her most recent. The fact that the three alternating timelines of the book never got muddled or confusing is a real testament to Lisa as an author and I enjoyed that as we discovered more about 'the night of' so were the characters. The was one of the first books for a while where most of the characters (Sophie, Tallulah and Kim) were actually really likeable which is certainly no bad thing. There is also the character of Scarlett who is a really interesting and complex addition that I could never make my mind up on. I understood the requirement of Sophie to the plot but I felt there needed to me more time on developing her as a character, especially her relationship with Shaun. I just didn't really get them as a couple and I think more time spent on their dynamics would have been beneficial. As other reviewers have said, there are a few things that crop up that seem a bit unrealistic/lazy on the authors part. For example, author Sophie forgetting a pretty big part of one of her own books that just so happens to end up cropping up as part of the main storyline. I also raised my eyebrows a few time at how crap the police were and how often they needed to be helped by the likes of Kim and Sophie. Essentially, there's quite a bit of artistic license taken with this book.

Ultimately, this is an intriguing story with plenty of red herrings and some neat twists. While it is a slow burn and not the darkest of plots that many thriller fans will be used to, it's well worth a read for the journey.

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this book and as usual, Lisa Jewell does not disappoint. The story revolves around young Mum Tallulah and her coercive and quite controlling boyfriend Zach. Talullah gets involved with the cool quirky girl at college, Scarlett and this changes her world.
The story jumps forward a year to Sophie, a young detective novelist who has just moved to the area. She tries to piece together what happened a year ago when Talullah disappears.
It’s very cleverly written and keeps your interest throughout. The characters are three dimensional and you can see that they are all flawed in some way, true to real life.
I could t put this down and was desperate to know what happened on that fateful day and the story did not disappoint. Clues are left throughout the story and it was a brilliant read.

I would highly recommend this book as Lisa is my favourite author and I have been reading her books for decades now. Always engrossing, highly readable and pure pleasure.

The plot kept me engaged as it went along but there were no big twists or huge surprises. At the end I there was a plot hole which was a bit unsatisfactory! Having said all that, it's a good quick read, summer thriller.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.
The night she disappeared is based on many different characters and takes you between the year before and present day, surrounding the disappearance of new parents Tallulah and Zach, which unfolds the events leading up to their disappearance and there after.
Lisa Jewell has produced another fantastically written novel, however, I found The night she disappeared to not peak my interest and have me swept in from the first page unlike her previous novels.
I found it very slow and honestly did not peak my interest until around 70% when more details of the evening of disappearance came to light. I found the characters to be very uninteresting and some of the storyline predictable, however, I was on hooks on what actually happened to Tallulah and Zach and did not predict the outcome so on this basis I give it 4 stars and recommend for a summer read.

Loved this book, although I adore all of Lisa's books. This one didn't peak my interest quite the same as some of the others and bits didn't feel quite as well put together as normal. Still definitely worth a read though, perfect thriller!

I didn’t really enjoy this. I found it hard to care about the characters and after about a third of the way through, I skipped to the end and read the ending. I did care about what had happened but I wasn’t gripped enough to read the parts in between.

I usually love Lisa Jewell’s books, I’m sad I didn’t like this one.

This is Lisa Jewell at her very finest! I personally love all of her books, but she has totally excelled herself with this cracker!

From the very start I was drawn into the world of Maypole House, where not everyone was as honest as they seemed. There is so much to enjoy in this book that it is difficult to give a thorough review without adding spoilers. Sufficient to say that the tension never stops mounting as the story unfolds. Would definitely recommend, no one will be disappointed. If I could give more than five stars I would!

Thank you NetGalley.

June 2017 young parents Tullulah and Zach go missing after they go out on a long overdue night out together, they were last seen in the early hours at the house of a local socialite, but the clues to their disappearance end there. 12 months later headteacher Shaun and his novelist partner Sophie move onto the grounds of a prestigious school close to where the pair were last seen. After finding some potentially vital clues Sophie becomes absorbed in the mystery and starts digging deeper for more information and stumbles on some interesting discoveries.

What a fantastic read, I couldn’t stop reading and each chapter was interesting and full of suspense. The story is told in both before and after, well written and easy to follow.

‘The Night She Disappeared’ -Lisa Jewell
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
⚠️ False imprisonment, murder, domestic abuse and sexual assault ⚠️

Initially this took some perseverance to establish the range of characters and events in my mind. Both Sophie’s, Kim’s and Tullulah’s POVs ran in tandem, albeit in contrasting time periods; shifting from 2017 to 2018.

From 20% onwards I was up to speed and fully invested in this mysterious, brooding storyline... where did Zach and Lulah disappear to? The Woods? The Dark place? Moreover, what does Scarlet Jacques know and what attributed to her sudden fall from grace and entitled superiority?

This book is tense, steadily building momentum until the unanticipated crescendo. Plenty of original concepts and an intriguing use of time and varying narratives. A sensational thriller, worthy of five, shiny gold stars!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House, Cornerstone UK for this outstanding eARC.

I loved this book! I have to say that Im a big fan of Lisa Jewell but this book was I think the best to date. I loved the story settings, the characters and the plot. It kept me involved and I could not put it down till I finished it. What more can you ask for? Oh and its very rare that I give 5 stars..

Wow, what a book. The best I’ve read this year, brilliant from start to finish. Having read the authors situation on writing this amazing book during lockdown last year, I’m so glad she was pushed to finish it. Words cannot express how much I enjoyed reading it. Where the fantastic characters and plot come from I cannot start to imagine. Nothing short of five stars, I would give it more if I could.

Family secrets, an abandoned mansion, a boarding school - this has all my favourite ingredients for a thriller and in the capable hands of Lisa Jewell they make for a thrilling concoction.

Just when you start to think you know where this is going, you don't! Admittedly the ending was a little far fetched but I guess that's what makes it all the harder to see how things are going to play out. This book jumps effectively back and forth between a few short years until the time lines collide at the same time as the main plot and a few smaller subplots. All the characters are relatable, well almost! An exciting thriller of disappearance, murder, revelations and love. Thank you to Netgalley for the advance reader copy of this book.

I've read a couple of Lisa Jewell novels before this one and have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by them. The books are well written, with good plots and likeable characters.
I was less taken with this one I'm afraid. I think a lot of it was to do with the main character of Sophie. I just couldn't warm to her. This wouldn't have been such an issue if the other characters made up for it but I didn't particularly like them either. I thought that the plot started out well but in the end the events just got more implausible as the story unfolded.

Lisa Jewell has done it YET.AGAIN.

I begin this review to simply say that I am completely floored and at a loss for words which doesn’t happen easily to me at all. Why do you ask? Well, I have just finished Lisa Jewell’s latest novel “The Night She Disappeared” and I am not exaggerating when I say that this book has kept me hooked from page one! And I know that I say this every time I read another one of Lisa Jewell masterpieces, but I really think this could very well be her BEST YET.

“The Night She Disappeared” tells the story of teenage mum Tallulah who is heading out for date night on a midsummers night in 2017, leaving her baby son Noah at home with her mum Kim.

Tallulah sends her Mum a text at 11pm. And at 4:30am Kim awakens to find that her daughter has not come home.

Kim begins to worry, after all her daughter is a devoted mum to her son. Something doesn’t feel quite right. After asking around, friends of Tallulah tells Kim that she was last seen going to a pool party at a house near the woods called Dark Place.

Tallulah never returns.

In 2018, Sophie is walking in the woods behind the boarding school that her boyfriend now works at as the new head-teacher. As she’s walking she stumbles across a sign nailed to a fence. A sign that chillingly says: DIG HERE…

This book has literally kept me on the edge of my seat from page one. Lisa Jewell is a master at her craft and boy does she know how to toy with the reader. Making us think one thing, and then it turns out to be something else entirely. I found it incredibly difficult to put it down and found myself putting off chores to devour the last half within a day.

It’s ironic that “The Night She Disappeared” was enjoyed by myself and many other book bloggers IN lockdown, it will most likely be enjoyed by people *hopefully* out of lockdown when it’s released in July, but actually LJ wrote this book IN BLOODY LOCKDOWN. And although she struggled to write it in a time when the world was in such an uncertain place, I’m really glad that she did because her hard work really payed off with this one.

As I said at the beginning, I often read LJ’s books and each and every time she surpasses the previous one. I always say “This is her best one yet.” But I genuinely do think that this is her best work yet! That is until the eagerly awaited “The Family Upstairs 2” is released next year. Eeeeek. “The Night She Disappeared” is dark, it’s enthralling, and completely unputdownable. Readers are in for a wild ride. The characters are relatable, they’re messed up, they’re complex but the humanity in them really shines through. Well… in some of them at least.

The journey will lead readers all the way through to a satisfying, and explosive finale that will leave you open mouthed and begging for more. All I will say is… Just wait until the last page. That last paragraph. Wow. Just… WOW.

Lisa Jewell has such a skill of drawing you into the world she creates and holding you there, tangled in the mystery. You're compelled to read on and find out what happens to her characters.

The Night She Disappeared follows the story of a teenage mum, Tallulah and her boyfriend, Zach, who seemingly vanish after a night out. A year later Tallulah's mum is no closer to understanding what happened to them and is struggling to look after their son, Noah.

As you go back to their lives before they disappear, and a picture begins to build, everything you think you know gets turned on its head.

Themes of money and privilege, control and friendship run through the story and make it a proper page turner.

There was just one element that jarred a little for me. A character, Sophie, is a novelist of cosy detective stories, but fails to recognise a plot situation taken straight from the pages of one of her own novels. It didn't take away from the book as a whole though and, as usual, you're in safe hands with Lisa Jewell.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this early copy.

I’m not going to lie. This book took a lot of getting in to. I struggled with the amount of characters, remembering who was who and their relationship with others. The story also kept flipping from 2017 and 2018 to add to the confusion.

Tallulah is a teenage Mum to Noah. She lives with Noah, her boyfriend Zach (Noah’s Dad) her brother Ryan and her Mum Kim.

Whilst at college Tallulah is befriended by Scarlett - she a popular girl with a clique of friends and wealthy family.
When she and her boyfriend is invited to Scarletts house for a party, Tallulah leaves Noah with her Mum and then vanishes.

A year later Author Sophie moves in to the living quarters at Maypole College with her boyfriend Shaun who is the new headmaster and finds a note on the gate saying “Dig Here”

This links back to the disappearance of Tallulah and Zach.......

There is a lot of people in this story and like I said it took me a long time to get in to it and get my head around who was who. The ending felt slightly rushed and I figured out half of the reveal at the end.
The book was just “okay” for me it wasn’t a good enough story for my confusion to be worth it. Too many characters, some not even necessary (like Zach’s parents for example) and an ending that was disappointing.
Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for gifting me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lisa Jewell is back with another phenomenal thriller that will suck you in and keep you guessing until the shocking final reveals leave you reeling! The Night She Disappeared is destined to become another smash hit for one of the thriller genres most consistently brilliant writers.

I am a huge fan of Jewell’s novels and for me, she keeps getting better and better (which I’m pretty sure I say with every release!). I wasn’t sure if anything could top the magnitude of excellence that is Invisible Girl, but The Night She Disappeared is equally as fantastic in different ways. The social commentary in this novel is there in a more subtle way, but frankly, it doesn’t need to be as prevalent. First and foremost, this is an utterly gripping mystery that cleverly brings the reader along on the journey to its shocking climax. The narrative is told through multiple timelines that are expertly and intricately woven together. As the present day events unfold and the truth of Tallulah and Zach’s disappearance begins to unravel, the timelines set prior to this develop the characters and sow the seeds that eventually blossom into the truth. I found this style so engaging and I really enjoyed moving between these timelines and trying to work out how things would come together. Needless to say, I could not guess exactly what was going on and I was only able to piece things together exactly when Jewell wanted me to. This is testament to her skills as a writer, as I was genuinely floored by some of the revelations, despite having developed certain suspicions as and when Jewell constructed me to.

One element of Jewell’s novels that keeps me returning is the excellent exploration and commentary on humanity and society. Although this plays less of a role here, there is a brilliant study of privilege and wealth. There are characters who fully manipulate both of these, as well as characters who are desperate to find these. Similarly, relationships and identity are very much at the heart of this story. These drive the mystery, tension and suspense. For me, the most interesting aspect was the exploration of power people hold over others. There are multiple characters who exert this and the affects are devastating on all fronts. This is very much a story of manipulation, obsession, cruelty and entitlement. However, it is also a story about love, hope and discovering true identity.

The Night She Disappeared is an exceptional, exciting read that should be on everyone’s summer TBR pile!

Lisa Jewell, The Night She Disappeared (2021)

Lisa Jewell’s The Night She Disappeared draws us in with an absorbing, beautifully crafted story that holds us in suspense throughout. As in Jewell’s other novels, our attention is compelled not only by the intricate plotting but by characters so richly created and memorable that they stay in the reader’s mind long after the final pages.
The girl who has disappeared is nineteen year-old Tallulah Murray, a college student who lives with her mother in Upfield Common in the Surrey hills, together with her boyfriend Zach and their baby son. When Tallulah and Zach go for a rare night out at the local pub, they never return. The last time they were seen is at Dark Place, the old mansion of a rich acquaintance of Tallulah’s called Scarlett Jacques. In a novel of proliferating mysteries, we are repeatedly brought back to the question of how the lives of two characters so apparently unlike one another became so closely intertwined:

“Tallulah is a pretty girl, but looks like the sort of girl that likes to blend into the background, who doesn’t like compliments or fuss, the sort of girl that likes routine and normality and simple food, who doesn’t experiment with clothes or make-up in case she gets it wrong. Yet somehow she found herself embroiled in a Bohemian, self-centred family like the Jacqueses. How did it happen?”

As we realise the extent of Tallulah’s involvement with Scarlett and with the disturbing secrets of Dark Place, the tone of the narrative becomes increasingly Gothic and terrifying.

Jewell says in her Acknowledgements that she wrote The Night She Disappeared during lockdown, when changes in life and family routine meant that she temporarily found herself unable to write. It is possibly an experience that fed into her creation of another of the novel’s central characters, Sophie Beck, a writer of ‘cosy crime’ novels whose move to a new life in Upfield Common has left her suffering from writer’s block. Instead of writing, she throws herself into trying to solve the village’s year-old mystery of what happened on the night Tallulah and Zach disappeared. The writer as amateur sleuth is instrumental in propelling the investigation forward. Sophie’s involvement also reinforces the reader’s sense of how distant Jewell’s strange and sinister world is from the comforting confines of old-fashioned crime writing.

At the end of the novel, Sophie, writing again, has decided that she will leave behind the conventions of cosy detection embodied in her Hither Green Detective Agency and move on to writing about “the wide world, not just one corner of it." The Night She Disappeared – perhaps such a novel as an older, more experienced Sophie might go on to write – is a darkly satisfying psychological thriller. Highly recommended.

I have always loved Lisa Jewell books and this one certainly didn't disappoint. Told in 2 different time spans, this book was fast paced with twists right up to the very end.

2017, 19 year old Tallulah is mum to baby Noah and living with her mum. She is working hard to get herself through college, and although her and Zach, Noahs dad, had originally not been together, had rejoined with Zach desperate to make their relationship a permanent arrangement. On a planned night out, Zach is ready with a ring to propose. However the evening did not go to plan with the couple last Bering seen with friends at a swimming pool party. They never make it home.

2019, Sophie has just moved into the local boarding with her boyfriend, who is to be head teacher. She is a crime novelist and after finding an engagement ring buried outside of her house, becomes embroiled in the mystery of Talulahs and Zachs disappearance. Events begin to unfold as to what exactly happened that night.

Brilliant read, highly recommend.