Review posted to blog: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend.com/

The day Emma decides to confront her husband James and ask for a divorce is the day he doesn’t come home. Little does she know he crashed his car into the garage and his body lay in a heap.

As Emma and her kids, Hunter & Kelsey deal with the aftermath of James’ death, so do their closest friends. Life behind closed doors was not as it seemed. Then again, no one’s life is.

When the secrets come tumbling out, no one is left unscathed.

A melodramatic domestic drama that left much to be desired. For me, I simply felt as though way too much was going on in everyone’s lives and it made my eyes roll. What I thought at the end of this was that my friends and I just don’t have that much going on.

This was a buddy read/listen with Kaceey.

Thanks to Gallery Books for the arc via NetGalley.

Published on Goodreads and Twitter.

I liked this authors YA books but I could have used a little more of that YA drama in this one. I didn't love it but honestly it takes a special domestic thriller to get this rom com loving reader to enjoy it. I could have used a dose of hope or happiness in this one and that is a personal preference.

What a surprise! This book presents itself one way in the beginning, but it turns out nothing is as it seems! I enjoyed reading Wish You Were Gone! Each one of the characters developed into something completely different than what you expected. Except James. Once a piece of shit, always a piece of shit,

3.5*
This book starts off with a BANG! Literally! As James fatally crashes his car into the family garage.

Now Emma and her 2 kids are left to pick up the pieces and move on. Though honestly, she’d had her fill of James’ shenanigans in the first place!🙄 Not that she wanted him dead mind you!😉

But with the help of her two closest friends, there’s hope of starting over again.

As time goes by, Emma is uncovering disturbing information about her late husband that has her questioning everything about him and their marriage.

I toggled back and forth between the written and audio versions. The cast of narrators for the audio powerfully give this story a real boost. If you have the option I would definitely go with the audio!

This was a fun domestic thriller, and while I was left with some unanswered questions, I still enjoyed! Hope you will too!

Posted to: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend...

A buddy read/audio with Susanne!

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books as well as Simon and Schuster Audio.

Lots of POVs and kind of all over the place at times, with a juvenile cast of characters who make dumb decisions and treat each other like crap. This was hard to finish and admittedly I skimmed from about 45% to the end just to find out what happened.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the gifted eARC.

Thank you to Netgalley for this arc. I really enjoyed this book. It was engaging, well written and the story was flowed easily. Emma and her children lived a frightful life full of emotional abuse by one of the persons who was supposed to love them. James an alcoholic father and husband, loved by the outside world, but feared by his family. This story held me captivated until the ending, which I did not see coming. I encourage any reader who enjoys a good thriller to give the book a go.

Emma and her children have lived under the thumb of her husband. Each dreading the inevitable, his drinking and its consequences. When the fates conspire and the family is delivered from his violence and threats , each deals with the consequences of that tragedy . It is twisty and unflinching in its conclusion. Each member of the family had their reasons to want him gone , it’s chilling how he came to his alcoholic end. Each is released from the pain he inflicted. He vows to keep the secret the rest of their days.

This book was just not for me. From the start, we're told that James is a horrible person -- an alcoholic and unfaithful -- but we're also told that at one time he and Emma were in love. She struggles but remembers those early days. Yet now he's a drunk and a cheat; why? What brought him to this place? What about his life was so terrible that he decided to find solace in drinking instead of something more responsible? Is Emma truly that innocent? Did she ever try to get out of the situation/talk to him/seek help/divorce him/have any sort of true agency in changing her fate? And how on earth is James able to hold down such a high-profile job if he's sloshed all the time?

Everything about this book felt like it was on the surface. We're supposed to be shocked and amazed at the twists and turns, but many of them were obvious long before the characters figured things out. Emma spends a lot of time wringing her hands and trying to figure out who her husband's mistress might have been, and while the little twist there was clever it came after pages of much more obvious "secrets" that the characters just couldn't figure out on their own.

I felt like there were too many things going on in this book that were put there simply for the purpose of increasing the shock value. In the end, I just shook my head at the whole thing. The biggest reveal at the end was, quite frankly, a disappointment.

I'm sure others liked this, but unfortunately I couldn't really find anything about it that appealed to me.

A fast paced thrill ride I couldn’t put down, read this if you like twisty thrillers, solid twist too and character driven suspense

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon &Schuster for the eARC of Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott. I thought this was a great family thriller that just didn't stop! It was a fast read for me ( two late nights until 4 AM) cause I just couldn't stop. I like short chapters in a book, lots of action and when each chapter is told from a different character's POV. THATis a great novel for my taste. These characters were developed fully and I questioned some, and rooted for others. At the end of each chapter, clues were given to keep you guessing! I've never read a book with one of the character's have a certain medical condition (no spoilers), and it was fascinating to read about this illness. I found the ending to be a little crazy - maybe just too many loose ends coming together all at once,but this story is definitely a 4.5 stars for me!

4.5 ⭐'s
#Wish You Were Gone. #NetGalley

(3.0*)

Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott is a domestic thriller full of wicked secrets, focusing on Emma Walsh and James, her dead husband. Emma finally works up the courage to meet up with James to confront him about his crazy drinking problem — his alcoholic rages, his blackouts, and the fear his family (Emma and their daughters) feel when he’s behaving in those manners.

But… James never shows up. To the planned meeting.

This leaves Emma with tons of unsaid things which overwhelm her, and I guess they’ll forever go unsaid… Because James is found dead — his car has smashed through their home’s garage and now as his lifeless body sits before his family, do they even care that he’s dead?

This was a pretty decent read. I haven’t had that great of reads lately (or maybe it’s just my luck with Netgalley), but I really did enjoy this book. It has a very engaging and captivating beginning, but I did feel that the pace slowed down during some of the story, which would tend to lose me. Another thing I will note because it sometimes lost me too, is there immense amount of secrets from literally every character. I also felt that the way the multi-POVs were written a little different than I am used to, maybe not as organized, so I found myself sometimes confused or lost.

Overall, it’s a decent read full of tons of secrets, lies, twists, and turns. Just not a favorite of mine.

Thank you Netgalley and Gallery Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This family suspense novel opens with a literal bang - Emma's husband, intoxicated, drove through their garage to his death, shaking the whole house. And while the PR founding partner seemed to have it all, his family knows him as a very different man than his public persona. Split across multiple perspectives, both leading up to the accident and the aftermath, this hooks the reader right in. Emma investigates her husband's life while it soon becomes clear that her own two closest friends harbor secrets related to her husband as well.

It's a fast-paced and engaging read. While some twists are easier to see coming than others, it's a read that thoroughly captures your attention. The characters come to life and it's interesting to see the two-faced nature of so many of them. This is my first experience with the author's writing and I am definitely going to be keeping an eye out to see what she follows this one up with. It is well-plotted and entertaining. The dynamic between Gray and Lizzie is surprisingly immature, but the sports angle of the business adds some unexpected glamor. I really enjoyed this one!

Do you like puzzles? This is what this story is its a puzzle where each chapter is another piece until you have the whole picture. I love a good puzzle. Each chapter I'd another pov and each chapter adds to the story of what's going on and how everyone is intertwined.

What do you do when you wake up to a loud noise thinking someone is in the house but it turns out it was your father/husband crashed into the garage dead? But there's so many pieces that don't add up. We he so drunk he passed out? Then why doesn't it add up.

Someone the world thinks is amazing has a lot of secrets and a differnt side to his close friends and family.

Again this is a puzzle where you think you know which piece fits but it's so much more than the bugger picture.

Thank you to NetGallery for this E-ARC in exchangefor my honest review.

James is a great guy. His co-workers and clients like him. James is a different guy at home. His wife wants a divorce. Before she can serve him with papers, he drives drunk through the garage and dies.
Emma, his wife, has questions. Where has he been? Why did he change parts of his will? Who has his phone? Was it an accident or did someone kill him?
Emma looks for answers. Her friends want to help. Her children are suffering consequences of their fathers behavior.
The ending was a surprise. Thanks NetGalley and Kieran Scott! I stayed up late to finish it!

Emma and her two kids have been putting up with her husband James and his drunken rages for years and Emma has had enough, she has arranged a dinner with James at a restaurant to hand him divorce papers, she wants him gone now. Emma arrives home later, livid that James didn’t show and discovers James dead in his car that somehow drove through garage, collapsing it. When information comes out that leads Emma to believe this may not have been an accidental death, she begins to investigate and discovers an unimaginable house of cards. This is a very good, suspenseful read with twists galore.

Everyone thought the Walshes were a picture-perfect family, but appearances can be deceiving. You never know what goes on behind closed doors. When Emma's husband suddenly crashes through the garage wall and ends up dead, it is a relief that she and her children will no longer have to endure his drunken rages. Then little clues lead her to believe that there was a lot she didn't know about her husband and perhaps it wasn't an "accident" after all. As I got to know each of the characters, it soon became apparent that each one had a reason to feel guilty. I found this to be an engaging contemporary family drama. Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the opportunity to read and review Wish You Were Gone.

Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott was like one big, juicy, delicious puzzle that I absolutely had to solve. I was invested in Emma and her two teenagers from the get go and could not stop reading until I got to the very last page. Highly recommend!

Domestic drama full of the biggest collection of hideous people ever.

Emma's husband is dead. The drunken fool just rammed his expensive car into the back wall of their garage. As she reels in shock, Emma and her teenage children, Hunter and Kelsey, are comforted and helped by her friends Gray and Lizzie. But everyone has secrets and now that James is gone from their lives, it's all about to come out.

All I can say is that if I had friends and family like that I would be quite sorry. This was all quite predictable and some of the interaction between the main characters was a bit unbelievable in terms of how the women I know behave and treat each other. I was not able to feel anything but disgust for all of them in this novel. So perhaps this was just not something I should have picked up to read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the e-book ARC to read and review.

I really enjoyed this book! The story was compelling like a puzzle that came together in a very satisfying end that left a smirk on my face! I think people who enjoyed reading Big Little Lies will also love this one because it had the same kind of vibe. This story is told in 3 POVs of three friends and starts with a bang when one of their husbands crashes his car into the garage after a late night of drinking. From there the story unfolds, secrets abound, and the mystery of how this husband came to his untimely demise is revealed.

Thank you Netgalley, Gallery Books, and Kieran Scott for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Real Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

I quite enjoyed this book, I just wish it had committed to one course of action instead of not quite being able to decide what kind of mystery or thriller it wanted to be. While the blurb grabbed my attention and the plot was definitely interesting, the follow-through definitely lacked depth and the characterizations were shallow enough to be a moderate disappointment.

That being said, the book was engaging enough for me to finish it and not complain too much. While I don’t think this is a book I would recommend to everyone or re-read myself, I don’t think I would tell people it’s horrible, either.

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.