Then She Was Gone: From the number one bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

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I thoroughly enjoyed this story and the ending was very touching and satisfying for me. Would recommend! The interesting fact is the way of disappearance of Noelle reminds of her the way of disappearance of her own daughter. I have now read the last few books by this author and look forward to reading many more. To prove a point of mine, it is possible to write a good and suspenseful story without blood, excess gore and constant action. This is the kind of psychological thriller I actually enjoy. Jake's girlfriend, Blue, calls Laurel after the dinner. Blue says that she thinks Floyd is hiding something and that his aura is dark. Laurel is dismissive. Laurel meets Floyd Dunn at a cafe, and they go to dinner at a Eritrean restaurant. Floyd has two kids, a 21-year-old named Sara-Jade (from his first marriage to Kate Virtue) and Poppy, 9-year-old from a casual relationship. Poppy's mother abandoned her at his doorstep when Poppy was four.

I ran her a bath and let her sit at the mirror in my bedroom to arrange her hair. I found an old makeup bag of yours and she applied some mascara, rubbed some colour into her waxy cheeks. I love strongly character driven novels, including thrillers and that is what Ms. Jewell does so so well. I became invested in the feelings of Eliie’s mother, and as a mother of four daughters, I wanted so badly for things to somehow turn out that this poor woman didn’t have to continue without knowing what happened to her missing beautiful, intelligent, golden girl! Laurel is immediately taken with Floyd's youngest daughter, Poppy, who is beautiful and wise beyond her years, truly an old soul. But Laurel cannot shake just how similar Poppy looks to Ellie, and how at times, when Poppy speaks, it is like she's in the same room with her daughter. As questions start to form in her mind about Floyd and what secrets he might be hiding, more and more her questions about Ellie's disappearance begin surfacing again. Did Ellie run away, or did she run into danger somehow? And why do Poppy and Ellie seem so similar? Ellie thinks she knows who it might be. But she cannot bring herself to crystallize her suspicions. She’s known something was about to happen, that something was about to change. She’s known it for weeks. Floyd has been less attentive, spent less time with her. She’s heard footsteps overhead, the vague outline of a female voice. There’s been laughter in the house. And when Floyd did come to visit, he was serious and thoughtful, and more concerned, Ellie had felt, about her predicament.Is it not more believable than a regular person saying she didn't like Floyd because he gave her the heebie-jeebies? Unless its to show readers that the both of them are both nutters and deserve each other? Okay, then. Stop beating a dead horse and let's move on.

This is something most parents do, and most of their children dislike. Laurel, in this novel, decided in the earlier part of her life to never do it to her children. A guilt trip is a type of emotional manipulation to make others think or do certain things in a particular way. Many of us might have involuntarily done this in our life. Lisa Jewell points it out very clearly in this book.This story was very dark, gloomy, and creepy, but also quite emotional and poignant. Laurel's voice is so realististic, raw, and sympathetic, she nearly had me believing she was a real person and that this was a true story. Her emergence from a tortuous state of limbo and her fierce determination to get to the truth, and begin truly living life again was an amazing transformation. It was possible, she thought, that Hanna had met a man, but unlikely. Hannah hadn't had a boyfriend, not one, ever. Someone once mooted the theory that Hanna felt too guilty to have a boyfriend because her little sister would never have one. The same theory could also be applied to her miserable flat and her nonexistent social life. In the alternate ending, Ellie doesn't die, instead Floyd finds Ellie in the basement after he kills Noelle. He's scared of losing Poppy, so he keeps her alive in his basement. After he kills himself, Laurel and Ellie are reunited.