Incredible book. As a mother this book gripped me from the start of the first page.
And a page turner it was.
A host of emotions throughout.
My heart wanted to break for the Mack family.
Highly recommend

I read this in one sitting, just could not put it down! The story is about Laurel Mack and the events surrounding her daughter, Ellie's, disappearance 10 years earlier. It's a bizarre, creepy and sad tale told from the point of view of 4 main characters. My only issue was that I guessed what was going on pretty much right from the start but it's still a great read!

15 year old Ellie Mack goes missing one day. Her mother never gives up of finding her. 10 years later later the family has moved on and Laurel has separated from her husband, Ellie's remains are found in a local nearby wood. She meets Floyd after things are going good for a while she spends the night and then meets his daughter Poppy that has a striking resemblance to her daughter R#Ellie when she was at that age. All the feelings of Ellie start coming back. Where did Ellie go? What had happened to her?

This was an exciting, riveting, read It was intense and stirred so many different emotions witch each chapter.. It was a real page turner. I can't wait to discover what Lisa also has to offer.

This book recieved my 4 star because it was a very interest of it .since Ellie has been missing , Polly is very pretty and double of Ellie when she was younger x

I absolutely loved this book. Another great read from lisa jewell.
It was slightly predictable about half way through but it did have a twist at the end
Read about the lives of a family ripped apart with the disappearance of a 15 year old daughter and sister. Leading to the eventual discovery of what happened thst fateful day.

I have read all of Lisa Jewell's books so was really pleased when this came up on Netgalley. The story kept me gripped from the beginning and even though it went backwards and forwards a bit, it was never confusing.. I warmed to the characters and it kept me guessing right up until the end. Lisa Jewell seems to have moved on a bit from the normal chick lit that she used to write about, but it has been a successful move and I really enjoyed this book, even made me cry! Thanks Netgalley for the advance preview of this book.

This book is equally as chilling as it is heart rending. A family torn apart and nearly destroyed.

Well written and far more believable than anyone would want bearing in mind the storyline.

Simply fantastic.

When fifteen-year-old Ellie goes missing her family’s lives crumble around their ears. How can they possibly go on without their golden girl?

Ten years on, Ellies mother Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter one day, but when some new evidence comes to light she’s finally able to move on. As luck, would have it, moving on comes in the form of charming and charismatic Floyd. Before too long Laurel is spending the night at his house and meeting his precocious 9-year-old daughter, Poppy, and she is the spitting image of Ellie.

Meeting Poppy sends Laurel on a journey for answers, answers to questions she has asked herself for the last ten years. What happened to Ellie? Where did she go? Who is hiding the secrets she needs?

By 15% I had pretty much summed up this story, not all the intricacies and conclusion but the general gist. This didn’t necessarily spoil the book but it did take away any possible suspense there could have been. However, it was interesting enough to keep me intrigued until the end. I’m not sure I found any of the characters particularly likeable or warming, I even found it difficult to sympathise with Laurel, at some points I wanted to scream at her, but for a story in which you don’t know who you can trust this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I must admit I hadn’t been wholly impressed with Jewell’s newer work up until now but this latest novel may be changing my mind. My one complaint would be that I think Jewell is talented and capable enough of going much darker than she has so far, adding a new level of grittiness to her writing. Whether the lack of this is due to affecting her fan crossover, I'm not sure.

Started this novel on Saturday morning and it was glued to me until I finished it on Sunday evening. This book is beautifully written in a language which captures images and moods perfectly without being too flowery or wordy. It's rare that I read passages out loud to my husband but I did so several times this weekend. One thing to comment, it's difficult to decide where to place this novel. It's certainly a great thriller but a surprisingly good family saga too. So I'll conclude by calling it a bit of both...scrub that. Its a lot of both and well worth a read. I shall look forward to reading others by this author.

This thriller starts slowly, building up rich, shrewdly observed characterisation, tension and momentum as it goes along. We are drawn first of all into the dynamics of family relationships, and none quite so powerful as a mother has with her daughter. Especially when the daughter, Ellie—a bright student with a great future before her, a happy fifteen year old on the cusp of true love—inexplicably goes missing. This shock event sets the scene for an unravelling family mystery and drama to come.

Ten years after the event, Laurel cannot forget her missing daughter for a moment, torn away like a piece of her own heart. Although other family members appear to be able to move on with their lives, she remains stuck to some extent, desperate to find Ellie and ever hopeful of a happy outcome, even while she lives with the thought of her worst fears being realised.

An unexpected romance with Floyd, a charismatic stranger, opens doors to the past for Laurel, because his nine year old daughter, Polly, is the spitting image of Ellie at the same age. The resemblance is so uncanny that alarm bells start ringing and answers need to be sought, at the risk of rejection once more.

Through myriad twists and turns, a strange, coincidental connection with Ellie from the past leads Laurel to further questioning. She finds it hard to reconcile what she thinks she knows with what actually happened behind the scenes. Eventually all is revealed in a painful yet heartwarming ending she didn’t see coming. I enjoyed having the story related from different perspectives, including Ellie’s. It’s a suspenseful, riveting read that will keep you captivated to the final page.

What happen when someone is missing and become a ghost for everyone in particular when a daughter disappear abruptly leaving all the family in the most complete desperation and shock?
It's this one the latest thematic treated in the newest Lisa Jewell's stunning, wonderful book: Then She Was Gone by Penguin on stores this July 27th.

I followed various cases of missing people as a reporter and I found this book extremely beauty, shocking, very well written, realistic, vivid, centered, very focused on story and characters, clear, lucid, and for this reason extremely captivating. The author couldn't imagine anything more beauty, dramatic and shocking in the complexity of events created in the while. When I finished to read this book this afternoon I was "burned out." I felt the story, the characters, their secrets and visible emotions and motivations. This novel is very strong in its complexity.

Captivating remains the main word with which I can define Then She Was Gone from the first to the last page. I couldn't put down this book for a second. I downloaded it yesterday with other eleven ebooks by NetGalley and I thought: OK Let's start with this one by Lisa Jewell.
I had read and reviewed also her previous book: I found You and I was more than satisfied.

Well, it was love at first...word! I couldn't stop to read it.

Lisa Jewell knows how to keep the reader interested and curious.

At the end you cry, but at the same time you are mentally stressed because you read an emotional tale with an emotional end and you can't cope with everything.

There is a partial victory. At the end the reality will be revealed and people will continue to live their life with less questions, more definitive answers but fundamentally with that peace that only a truth defined after a big shock can presents to a family in sufferance after a tragic adventure.
At the same time although the desperation of the tale, the cruelty lived and inflicted by some protagonists, you discover that there is still life.

The book is told with the various voices and point of views of the main protagonists, so you can "experience" also their own feelings and Lisa Jewell in this sense is wonderful entering perfectly in their souls. Feelings, sensations, motivations pathos and sentiments of the various protagonists are fluidly expressed and lived with immense knowledge, of the human beings' dynamics and feelings and interpretated in an hypnotic way entering in the mind of victims, murders, criminals, innocents.

The story is the one of a normal, common Londoner family. Lauren is married with Paul, they have three children in their teenage age, Jake, Hanna and Ellie, the littlest one. Chaotic family, typical problematic, a cat, a tumultuous but happy cheerful life populated by breakfasts, lunches, dinners, school, teenage problems, family routine and the joy of growing up three children. For Lauren and Paul this one was their life.

Ellie is a common teenager, pretty beautiful, plenty of life. She falls in love for Theo and that afternoon they have an appointment, but then she sees her old tutor and the course of her life will change. Forever.

Noelle Donnelly is a pretty weird and hard lady. It's not possible to obtain everything in life, true. We classify normality a life with a husband and some children. For Noelle seeing "this" normality is weird. She doesn't have friends, she spends her time alone. She obtained a degree in math from a prestigious university, Trinity, deciding to choose of tutoring teenagers.

It means she can visits various houses, discovering the life of a lot of young students, and their parents and siblings as well observing the environment where they live in.

She hasn't lived a lot of love-stories and she arrives virgin at a good age of her life when she meets a writer and mathematician, Floyd, author of a book who bewitches her. They don't exactly fall in love. They start a sexual relationship and at some point Floyd asks her for a child. More than 40, the child is conceived but there are difficulties. Once, two times. What to do for not losing the object of her passion?

Ellie experiences some difficulty with math and Noelle Donnelly, Irish origins starts to tutoring her falling in friendship with this girl so different from her. She would have dreamed to being like this girl. Life is so simple for these girls. Boys, school, everything. There are no complexities in these existences. To her, a real mistery. A mistery she discovers to be terribly obsessive.
A suggestion Noelle Donnelly Lauren obtains by Sandy a very nice neighbor.
Just, Noelle is weird with Ellie, she tells her strange things and the girl is too scared for continuing to being tutored by her and she asks to her mom of suspending these lessons. After all she has recuperated why continuing to see this nasty ad inopportune, maybe frustrated lady?
Ellie doesn't reveal to her mom the reasons why she wants to interrupt these lessons, thinking that they're not important, after all.

Noelle is too shocked when she understands that she is unwanted by Ellie. Ellie removed her from her mind in the while and to Noelle this is another shock.
She starts in the while to developing a horrible plan.
And one day, with the promise of a book where she girl would have studied it happened the unimaginable...

Lauren the mom of Ellie re-starts to live a sort of life after Ellie's disappearance, because after a tragedy like this one life is different.

She neglected her children and they abandoned their nest very soon, she neglected to cook after the disappearance of Ellie and children did it with passion and resignation all alone for their parents because the mom was somewhere else, lost in her thoughts, lost in her personal, private, impenetrable desperation that after all was the desperation of everyone else in the family.

She lost Paul, her husband with the time because the dialogue with her not anymore existent. He has a new companion.

Lauren goes on although her new existence is more poor, less populated by people of the past (and there are not a lot in the present) because you don't want to see anymore a lot of people, you don't want to tell all the time what you spent in terms of tears and anger, and unanswered questions.


Ten years after Ellie's disappearance one day Lauren receives a call from a police man. They have found something. Ellie's bag and some remains of Ellie's body. Her baby eaten by wild animals or who knows...

Some weeks after the funeral of Ellie's poor remains, Lauren meets Floyd. She is 55 and her passion for him the one of a teenager. Sex is the most beautiful one she has had from a long while. Floyd the best man she could have dreamed to fall in love for and with. Wonderful, tender, in love, protective. He has two children: Sarah-Jade a model pretty singular but nice born thanks to a relationship ended a lot of time ago and Poppy, the nine years old daughter he had had from Noelle Donnelly.

At first Lauren doesn't see the coincidence with this name and the disappearance of her daughter, just... They are so similar, in many ways. Ellie and Poppy. How can it be possible?

It's the beginning of everything because the heart of a mom can't stop to search for the truth, because the truth is more important than the same life. When Lauren discovers with horror the connection between Noelle Donnelly, the tutor of her daughter with her boyfriend and the similarities between Ellie and Poppy she starts a personal research. Interviews with Noelle Donnelly's relatives in the while disappeared without leaving traces, with her parents in Ireland, searching the lady in the net as well.

Who was Ellie's tutor? Hanna, Ellie's sister will confess to her mom that Ellie didn't like that lady at all and that was why she wanted to suspend the lessons. Ellie, simply, for candor, thought that maybe it was better to avoid certain details to her mother, she kept certain thoughts expressed by her tutor for herself, although these details would have been vital considering what happened later. A message of this book can be this one: dialogue in families,less discretion.

A missing person is like a phantom and that's the scariest part of the tale.

A disappearance leaves people astonished, shocked, without answer, without a body, and mainly without any kind of certainty and loads of questions. It's one of the biggest disgraces in this life compared to the one of losing a child. In this novel Lisa Jewell mixes superbly, dramatically well these two factors; the disappearance and the person disappeared: a child, the most precious character that a mother and a family can think at.

The complexity of what happens to Ellie while she decides to enters in the house of her tutor Noelle Donnelly for the promised book remind us at the case Fritz or Natascha Kampusch, in Europe kept segregated per years, mixing the story with elements of more recent horrifying stories as well.
It is terrible to read these pages but also interesting because we will seeing them reflected under the perspective lived by Noelle and Ellie.

I don't want to reveal more.

Floyd the man of a lot of secrets has been seen by Lisa Jewell as a character who at the end will choose for a drastic decision and a man he admitted is unable to love.
In this sense I disagree because Floyd had immediately perceived that Noelle was a very bad mother for Poppy, and he did all his best for saving Poppy from a mother without maternal sense offering to growing her up with the tranquillity, decency that a baby must have, giving her the proper education (Poppy is homeschooling a practice very appreciated by many families in UK) considering also the intelligence of the baby and her potentialities and discovering at some point a truth that would have just let him decide to send Noelle and Poppy to hell giving up with everything, but...simply he didn't and I think that the answer is not complicated. It's...Love. A story of love and dedication.
Parents sometimes are not the biological parents but people who grow up children with love. The ones do take care for them, the people able to teach them the lessons of life, educating them, loving to spend time with them and the ones who will mark their existence forever. In this sense to me Floyd is a winner. And he loves, absolutely loves Lauren.
The story with Noelle could be classified like the classic story of a man not in love for her, but searching in the while physical pleasure and company.
Sure there are extreme gestures lived by Floyd but dictated by very severe reasons and completely unwanted.
I would have seen at the end more "mercy" and understanding and a happiest end. Floyd has been another victim to my point of view of a great manipulator like Noelle is.

But, said this, these ones are just personal ideas, I can tell you that this book is a winning one.

The end is spectacular because can writes the words: "The End" at the story thanks to the direct written words of the central character of this book: Ellie and it is so touching. An extreme gesture in an extreme condition for giving back peace to her loved ones, setting everyone free and blessed with this final extreme love-letter, permitting to her family of continuing to live the existence in peace.



I surely thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this eBook!

Begins quite slowly but soon becomes un-put-down-able.
There are not too many characters in this novel, and the main ones especially are very well developed and believable.
What begins as a very sad tale of a missing teenager and the effect on her family becomes heart breaking when a very unpleasant character is involved.
Believable, scary and very sad. A must read.

I love Lisa Jewell's writing and 'Then She Was Gone' lived up to all of my expectations. I highly recommend it without reservation.

Laurel, who has grieved for her missing fifteen year old daughter for ten years, goes through a turbulent time after a chance meeting with an attractive man in a cafe. As the story unfolds, we find out that things aren't quite as they seem and Laurel may finally get the answers about her daughter, Ellie, that she has been looking for.

Lisa explores the breakdown and the reformation of family relationships after a tragedy with insight and this draws the reader into the family's story. Laurel's relationship with her daughter Hannah has been neglected and her marriage to Paul failed after her golden girl, Ellie, disappeared. Ellie took centre stage in Laurel's life and her disappearance doesn't change that.

Floyd, a complex flawed character, is written with compassion. He is brilliant at Maths but struggles with relationships and we can see why he made the choices that result in a mess of tangled relationships. Floyd tries, in his own way, to make things right.

This novel springs surprises right to the end and I would like to thank net galley for sending me a copy to review. I loved this book!

This is the first book by Lisa Jewell I have read, and it certainly wont be my last. Without giving too much away, the story follows the Mack family and the disappearance of their youngest daughter, 15 year old Ellie. I dont like reviews that give away the plot of the story as i feel that is what the blurb is for. This is one of the best books i have read this year, the story is gripping and in many places heart breaking. I really do recommend this book.

A plot you think you have worked out and then! A clever story with plenty of twists

This heartbreaking tale of a Mother's loss develops into one of a strange, seemingly impossible set of coincidences which eventually lead to Laurel discovering the awful reality of Ellie's disappearance. It examines how each character deals differently with the stresses they face and the way their reactions to grief affect their relationships. Although heart wrenching at times, I couldn't put this book down.

Then She Was Gone

This is a cracker. I've read a number of Lisa Jewell books, my favourite being The House We Grew Up In and now this one can be added to that. The story gripped me right from the very first chapter. Laurel lives with her husband Paul and their three children, Jake, Hanna and Ellie. She is a half glass empty sort of person, never fully appreciating what she has until the fateful day her golden girl Ellie sets off to the library and doesn't return. Ten years later sees Laurel living alone in an apartment virtually detached from her family and life in general, she works a part time job to keep things ticking over but she is just going through the motions, until she meets Floyd, a charismatic man who sweeps her off her feet. Things progress well until she meets Floyd's 9 year old daughter Poppy. This is where the story starts to really take off. Poppy is the spitting image of her missing daughter Ellie when she was Poppy's age. This is a fantastic read with twists, intrigue and mystery. Can't wait for the next Lisa Jewell book!

This was a fantastic read, one of my favourites of the year. How the author came up with this storyline I honestly don't know, it had twists and turns that seemed improbable yet became the possible. I loved all the characters, they were immensely real, I was very sorry when I came to the end of the book. It was a sad but ultimately hopeful tale full of people as diverse as they were believable. I would highly recommend this book and may re-read it sometime in the future. I felt as though I had been part of the whole scenario, personally knowing all the people involved, they were that real. This is no lightweight book, it's one filled with despair and hope and heartbreak but ultimately a satisfying and highly enjoyable read.

Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite authors of the sort of 'curry and flatmates' (her words) books I devoured when I was in my 20s and 30s. Her writing was always too intelligent and acutely observed to be dismissed with the label chick-lit, and in recent years she has moved away from this tried and tested formula into more reflective, family orientated fiction and this latest novel is a new departure again, into the popular (and in danger of becoming over-saturated) psychological thriller market.

Laurel Mack's 15 year old daughter Ellie went missing 10 years ago. Her loss devastated the family, causing the breakdown of Laurel's marriage and her emotional estrangement from her two other children. While still in this vulnerable state she meets and falls for a charismatic and seemingly perfect man called Floyd, and all is well until she meets his 10 year old daughter Poppy - who is the image of her lost daughter Ellie.

The story is told from various viewpoints - Laurel's, Ellie's and that of a strange woman called Noelle who has dark and sinister links to both families. I did have an idea of what the 'twist might be from pretty early on but it was handled sensitively and convincingly. I was a bit apprehensive about one of my favourite authors entering this genre, as I find that some psychological thrillers can be a bit melodramatic and unbelievable, but, despite the shocking storyline this wasn't the case here. I thought the ending was particularly poignant.

Incidentally I had to wait in line after my mum to read this book after she read the blurb and snaffled it before I could get to it. Her verdict was that it was gripping so I think I'll introduce her to a few of Lisa's back catalogue to see how she gets on with them..

Review from Cafethinking.com

In our little series on ‘truth’ we’ve covered fake news and untrue allegations. Today we feature a novel that reminds us that humans have a quest for truth: that not knowing can strike into our being. This novel also touches on what it might be like to not know who we are, to have our identity hidden from us. These are among the themes of Lisa Jewell’s psychological thriller Then She Was Gone, which is out later this month.

Then She Was Gone has one of the saddest endings to a novel that I’ve come across for a long time. This surprises me for a while, because to be honest I don’t really take to any of the lead characters. I suspect wizardry by the writer, who can portray the joys of the everyday and the hope and promise that is snatched away even, alongside the humdrum, the sad, the ordinary and deep personal tragedy. Even as she offers us scenes of unbearable despair, there’s a lightness to some of the prose as Jewell finds new metaphors that describe the human condition as we all live it. Every reader will know what is meant when Bonny’s voice is described as ‘beenaroundtheblock’. A death is hinted at pages before it is described, and I feel throughout that Lisa Jewell is deliberately turning up and down our emotions at will. Jewell is a gifted writer who knows exactly how to play us. Her use of multiple points of view helps, as we see things through the eyes of witnesses who may not be reliable or who – unlike us – don’t have access to the information we’ve seen.

In part, this book is about the struggle of the characters – all the characters – to come to terms with who they are. Just as the story of Amadeus pitted a bitter Salieri against a glittering Mozart, those who see themselves as mediocre resent others whom they believe to be brilliant or at least out of their league. Except that the golden people aren’t, much. And Jewell plays with our notions about whether self-loathing is something that was taught (for example, through bad parenting) or reflects something innate. There are plenty of layers, both to the truth and to the way in which it is unveiled and eventually they are all peeled away and we are left exhausted. But we can be satisfied that we have now been told the truth.

A week on from reading it, I’m still reeling, and am aware of having been made to reel. Then She Was Gone is a novel from a writer who is completely on top of her craft.

Then She Was Gone is released in the UK on 27 July 2017 and you can pre-order it here.

Thanks to Century for the review copy.