Pekkanen and Hendricks are one of my fave mystery duos of all time, so I was curious to see how Pekkanen would do solo. Although the story was entertaining to a certain degree, it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t as juicy as I know her work can be. I did not like the characters one bit, and that made it harder for me to keep going. I did finish the read, but saw all the twists coming and it didn’t leave too much to the imagination for me. Too bad, but hopefully better next time!

I love a good domestic suspense that really makes you think. At the heart of this book, the author really makes the reader ponder how far one would go to protect the person whom they love. There is so much to enjoy - dual POV, lots of family secrets and a few good twists. I loved the addition of journal entries to contribue to the plot and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough with this one!

When Ruth Sterling’s daughter, Caroline, decides she’s ready to move away from home and start fresh, Ruth will do anything to stop that from happening. Caroline thinks she knows her mother, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Ruth has spent decades keeping secrets from her daughter - she has no idea about her past or background. Ruth’s quest to keep her daughter by her side quickly unravels and both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.

I listened to this book and the audio was so engaging. While this is a bit of a suspense thriller, I would venture to say that it’s as much character driven as it is plot driven. It’s incredibly gripping and I found it to be quite emotional as we learned more about Ruth’s life and all the lies she has had to tell in order to keep up her facade. I really enjoyed the two points of views and how the author wrote about families dealing with illness and how it changes the family dynamic. I almost wish Ruth and Caroline had been narrated separately as I think it would have made the story that much more captivating on audio, but overall it was a fast-paced enjoyable read.

Wow. These women need some better communication skills. Both of them seem to have wants and needs going unmet because of their unwillingness to listen to each other. On top of that, they both have deeply hidden secrets that are just dying to come to the surface. I found this fast paced and easy to read. Both women had well-written characters.

Anyone who enjoys thrillers can't go wrong with this one.

Sarah Pekkanen's "Gone Tonight" is a masterclass in psychological suspense, a taut exploration of the intricate web of secrets woven between a mother and daughter. Pekkanen deftly constructs a narrative that peels back layers of deception with each turn of the page. The novel delves into the mother-daughter relationship with a surgeon's precision, dissecting the motivations, fears, and vulnerabilities of both characters. Ruth's desperation to keep her daughter by her side is palpable, and Catherine's longing for independence is equally heartfelt. It's a poignant portrayal of the universal struggle between holding on and letting go. The author excels in building tension, creating an atmosphere of unease that pervades the entire story. As the characters engage in a complex game of cat and mouse, readers are drawn into their world, constantly questioning their motives and loyalties. Pekkanen's writing is sharp and incisive, making every revelation feel like a punch to the gut.

Sarah Pekkanen delivered everything on her own that you have come to expect from her writing duo. My favorite part of her books is the slow build. There are twists and trues, maybe you see them coming maybe you don't, but either way it an enjoyable read. Then you hit the last 255 of the book and you feel like you never saw a thing coming. I don't want to say too much at the risk of spoiling it, but for every twist I guessed there were 2 that I could have never imagined. This was an enjoyable book and I devoured it.

Amazing! I couldn't put this book down because I was so hooked from the beginning to the end! The story was written so well and I couldn't wait to keep reading

I seem to be reading a lot of books about liars lately. This was a very good one. The plot leads you one way just to turn you around going the other way. Ruth is the single mother of Catherine. Ruth has been having memory issues and is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Catherine has just graduated nursing school and has a job waiting in Baltimore. She doesn't want to leave her mother and doesn't know what to do. Then she starts questioning her mother's past! That's where the twist comes in. Lots of surprises await the reader. Great book!!

I have read every book by the author and will continue to do so.

This is a slow-burning family drama with a little action at the end. The book alternates between an overbearing mother, Ruth, and her independent daughter, Catherine.
The book opens with Ruth slowly losing her memory. Catherine has always found her mother to be clingy, but she is now questioning if Ruth is faking her illness to keep her close especially since she is moving away.
Catherine begins digging into her mother's past to find out what she's been hiding. In the Ruth chapters, we learn about her childhood and why she has no friends or family. It all comes to an anti-climatic end.

I liked this book but wanted more. I liked Ruth's chapters but Catherine's fell a bit flat for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ruth has been protecting her daughter all of her life, but now the secrets are slowing starting to come out. While Catherine is trying to seemingly help her mother, Ruth, she discovers that she has been keeping secrets from her, not knowing how dangerous finding out the truth could be.

This is a fast, paced page turner that keeps you on the edge of your seat. A great plot with many twists and turns to keep you guessing.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for my honest review.

A fascinating book that combines themes of health and mother-daughter relationships and twists them up with a thriller that kept me guessing until the end. I sincerely didn’t see it coming.

Ruth is a single mother whose family has “thrown her out” when she becomes pregnant with her beloved daughter, Catherine. Ruth moves away and sacrifices everything for her daughter, working low paying jobs, foregoing education, and relationships of her own to assure her daughter is safe and happy.

Catherine is a nurse with big plans, ready to get on with her new career and life when a diagnosis blindsides her plans. That diagnosis whets Catherine’s appetite to know more about the family she shares with her mother, and her investigation threatens more than exposing her mother’s secrets.

Another creative and exciting thriller by Sarah Pekkanen! Don’t miss it!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. The book went on sale on August 1, 2023.

Gone Tonight was weird and unexpected, but also really enjoyable. Pekkanen does a great job with domestic drama, and this is no exception.

I loved this book. All the secrets, and the mother-daughter drama. Sarah did an outstanding job with it all.

I am sorry to say this one was not for me. It was a slow burn that I had a hard time getting into.
Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC for an honest review.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press, the author, and NetGalley for the free gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

A thrilling read, it was fast-paced and had lots of interesting twists and turns. Catherine is very close with her mother but all of a sudden things are not what they seem, which leads to some drama and a dual POV adds to the layers of this as it plays out.

Overall a great thriller but I definitely felt like the ending could have been more shocking, by the very end you knew what was going to happen since the crazy stuff happened in the middle - I was almost waiting for another shoe to drop.

I would definitely recommend this fast-paced thriller, for a dual POV and lots of smaller twists and turns throughout, a great fall read.

I would love to read Sarah’s other books, and can’t wait to see what she writes in the future.

It seems like Ruth and her daughter Catherine are close. It's always been the two of them, even as they've frequently moved around and Ruth has kept much of her past from her daughter. But as Catherine prepares to move away for the first time, Ruth feels panic at the thought of her daughter being apart from her, and their careful little world starts to crumble.

This fast-paced thriller is easy to read, with short chapters that tell us both Catherine and Ruth's point of view, but kept me waiting for a bigger twist that never came. Most of the surprises were pretty obvious. And while I know we needed drama for the story to move forward, I am not a fan of books where being honest would have just saved everyone most of the trouble! Ugh, just don't keep giant life changing secrets that affect everyone's safety, folks.

Pekkanen excels at writing "creepy," so you can't help but turn the pages and feel like something bad is going to happen. There are some eerie personalities at play here. I just wish things were a little more exciting and less predictable.

Gone Tonight is a story of a mother that will do anything to protect her daughter... that is if it means not being honest or telling the truth.

Ruth is the tough as nails mother who has been through the trials and tribulations and has overcome them all. However, Ruth's past is one she longs for as much as it is one that she has tried to run from. Her story starts long before Catherine was born and is sprinkled with confused love and teenage drama.

Don't let this make you believe that Gone Tonight is a fluff and filler kind of tail of a single mom and her daughter struggling to survive. While Ruth is surviving she makes the reader understand she by no means is struggling. Sure her life isn't perfect or what she would anticipate but she does whatever she can to protect Catherine from the terrors of her past.

As the story continues Catherine begins to realize that her mother may not be who she says she is. Catherine decides it is up to her to uncover the past and secrets her mother is not so willing to reveal. As Catherine goes deeper down the rabbit hole of her mother's past she uncovers that all that she knew of her mother was a lie.

Ruth had her reason. In Gone Tonight as the reader continues to learn more about Ruth and Catherine the reader cannot help to understand why Ruth did what she did. Who could blame her when it comes to protecting your child?

I can mention that this story does have references of teenage rape and pregnant runaways but in the end it all comes together. The final chapters are slightly bittersweet but isn't life as it is somewhat of the same?

It was nice to see Pekkanen taking a unique direction in her writing and to come away from her usual flavor while still staying in the suspense and thriller classification. I would certainly recommend this and it was an enjoyable read. Until next time, Happy Reading!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I have loved everything this author has written and this is no exception. It’s a story about and mother and daughter that has lived under the radar for years. They have had to pick up and move at a moments notice many times. The daughter has never understood why. Now that she is older, she begins to start looking into it. But, is she putting them in danger? 👀

This was a good book, a thriller with a premise I hadn't read before which is refreshing and I also liked the ambiguity of who was really the worse person, what is any of us capable.of? What makes someone bad or good?

What a great book about a mother/daughter relationship that is so much more than the reader suspects at the start. I had read about early onset Alzheimer's quite a few years ago when I read a book that literally changed my life called [book:Still Alice|2153405] by [author:Lisa Genova|978484], so when I read that Ruth Sterling, the mother in this story had the same disease I felt so bad for her and I knew what Catherine, her daughter, must be going through to live with the knowledge of her mother (and Catherine, the only two in their family) would be living with the rest of Ruth's life.

But, when Catherine's mother tells her that her own mother also had Alzheimer's, Catherine was concerned that it would be coming for her too. She felt that her mother was too private, held back a lot of things, and she began to dig for answers. What she found was definitely nothing she was expecting to find! Her mother, who HATED lying, actually had lied about a lot of things. Catherine was bound and determined to get to the truth of everything.