The Night She Disappeared Review

2017: 19-year-old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim.

Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into the early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.

The next morning, Kim phones Tallulah's friends who tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the nearby woods called Dark Place.

She never returns.

2019: Sophie is walking in the woods near the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started work as a head-teacher when she sees a note fixed to a tree.

'DIG HERE' . . .

A cold case, an abandoned mansion, family trauma and dark secrets lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell's remarkable new novel.

General Impressions

My first Lisa Jewell folks!!

Usually, I don't go for these kinds of thrillers and when I do, it's mostly as a palate cleanser between genres that I enjoy more but I was kindly sent a copy by Century and I really liked the synopsis and finally checking out the author.

What immediately got me hooked in this novel was that, unlike many in the genre, the characters don't take a passenger seat compared to the mystery/gore. No matter how close they were to the missing people, everyone had their own lives and struggles and weren't just twiddling their thumbs until the right time for them to add their piece of the puzzle. I didn't finish this book because I was rushing to know what truly happened or to check if I had solved the mystery before the main characters but because Lisa wrote real characters with lives and problems that I recognized and I wanted to see overcome.

I was happy enough with the mystery and how all the loose ties were found and tied throughout the novel by the several characters but I doubt I would have kept going if it had not been for the cast, principally Lula.

Lisa Jewell wrote Tallulah with such love and understanding and most of all, respect and lack of judgement. Yes, Talullah is a teen mum, but she is never portrayed as a bad mum, a flighty girl, or someone who made a mistake and resents their child. Yes, she is young and depends on her own mother, but she loves her baby and everything that she struggles with is never seen as something that she brought on herself, but problems that most mothers and girls her age often suffer from as well.

One of the big themes in this book is also domestic violence and that is something else I feel I have to congratulate the author on how well researched and written it was. From the insidiousness of gaslighting and psychological abuse to the weight of societal expectations that slowly isolate and hack at the character's self-esteem, Lisa took the reader on a journey, where we start the book by thinking one thing and then realize that we were fooled just like everyone else.

Conclusions

This was a quintessentially British thriller, where a newcomer to a small town, becomes involved with a mystery and the people connected to it but more than simply a story about finding out what happened, the author makes us care and understand how everything came to be. More importantly, with a majority female cast, this was a book about women struggling not to let themselves be erased by those around them and telling their own stories.

Thank you to Century for sending me this copy.

Rating: 4/5