I've never once been disappointed by this author's books, so I had high expectations for this one, and they were ALL met. It's fast paced, secrets abound, and the revelations come one after another once you reach the last quarter or so of the book. Even the small details that could be easily set aside serve a true purpose here and are worth paying attention to as the clues all come together.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

I went into this book completely blind, and I think that was the best way to do it. I tried to figure out the story as I went, reading the blurb much later on. I truly had no idea what to expect.

This psychological thriller shows the relationship and love between a mother and daughter. How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

This alternates between the two characters POV and it was done very well where I was able to follow along and not become confused on timeline or who was narrating. The climax of the book slowly built up as it when on, so by the time it happened you were on the edge of your seat waiting.

A great thriller with great narrators!

I have definitely been in a thriller slump and this got me right out of it!
I loved this book from start to finish.
First off, it doesn’t have the normal plots most thrillers have that I don’t care for: alcoholism, marital conflicts, etc.
Next, it was so psychological that even the ending was unsettling—-which was amazing.
Last, I love Pekkanen’s writing style. While still suspenseful, she has beautiful, lyrical descriptions.

I would totally recommend this book!

A good easy thriller, but it felt a bit repetitive and could have been shorter. No big twists or shocks, had things figured out pretty early.

This was so well written. I was engrossed from the first page and it ticked all the boxes of my expectations . I would definitely recommend to others.

Nothing is as it seems in a mother's desperate attempt to protect her daughter. This thrilling novel explores the consequences when long-held secrets begin to unravel, leading to a dangerous dance of deception between mother and daughter.
Catherine Sterling has always believed she knows her mother, Ruth Sterling, inside and out. Ruth is a quiet, hardworking woman who has dedicated her life to her daughter. Together, they have faced the world as a team. However, as Catherine prepares to embark on a new chapter in her life, Ruth becomes determined to prevent her from leaving home.
On the other hand, Ruth believes she knows her daughter, confident that Catherine would never rebel or question her mother's past. But as Ruth's desperate efforts to keep Catherine by her side start to expose cracks in her carefully constructed world, both mother and daughter find themselves entangled in a web of deception.
Ruth has a dark history that she has kept hidden, constantly moving from place to place and always ready to disappear at a moment's notice. The question arises: is the danger coming from Ruth's past, or is Ruth herself reaching a breaking point? Could the darkness lurking within Catherine be the source of the impending danger?
Sarah Pekkanen at the top of her game with her ability to build suspense while keeping you on the edge of your seat as you navigate the twists and turns of the story. Also drawing you into the complex dynamics between mother and daughter and the secrets they hold. Gone Tonight is a captivating and suspenseful thriller that will leave you guessing until the final pages.

4 Stars!

If you enjoyed The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, you'll like Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen.

Told in dual POVs while slowly uncovering secret pasts while creating a sense of tension.

Gone Tonight introduces us to Catherine Sterling, a nurse at a memory care facility who is about to move to another state. But Catherine's mother Ruth seems like she's willing to do anything to stop her. Ruth's past has always been a secret to Catherine, so when Catherine catches Ruth in a shocking lie, she decides to dig further into her mother's past.

The beginning is a slow build, letting us get to know Catherine and Ruth, both in the present and the past, but from about the halfway point on, it's fast-paced action. If you read a lot of thrillers and mysteries, I wouldn't expect to be surprised at most of the twists and turns, but the quick paced writing style and sense of urgency did make this a fun and enjoyable read.

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I’ve read An Anonymous Girl, which the author co-wrote, and I thought it was okay. But I’m always willing to read more from an author unless I just flat-out hated their other book. And this one started rough, but I’m glad I kept going because it ended up being better than it started out.

Ruth Sterling is showing early signs of dementia, and her daughter, Catherine, is about to leave home for the first time to take a new job. Ruth is really struggling with this fact for reasons she hasn’t been completely honest about. As Catherine starts to dig into her mother’s past, she begins to realize her mother has been keeping a lot of secrets about herself and Catherine’s history.

This book was good. I can’t say it’s one I’ll remember down the line because it’s like many other mystery books, but it kept me reading and I will recommend it to others who like the genre.

Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A mother and daughter have only each other. It's always just been the two of them, moving from place to place for as long as Catherine can remember. Catherine is getting ready to start her life as a nurse after graduation, she has a job all lined up and moves in a few short weeks. Her plans are about to change when her mother starts showing symptoms of dementia. How can she leave at a time when her mother, Ruth, needs her more than ever.
Slowly facts about Ruth's past come to light and things just don't add up for Catherine. She starts to investigate her mother's past, putting 'both their lives in jeopardy. What is Ruth's truth and just what is she hiding.

This is a slow burn beginning leading up to a full blast explosion of action, reveals that are shocking, heartbreaking and life changing.

initial thoughts: listened to the audio version and absolutely enjoyed Kate Mara narrating. like the two POVs and the flashback scenes, but other than that, I found the story a bit too unbelievable in many places.

was decent dog walking company, but I have enjoyed other books this author has written more than this one.

I enjoyed this story about a daughter who cares for her mother’s declining health. Catherine and Ruth are close, but I never got the sense that they were close, aside from obligation. The story was fast paced. I preferred Catherine’s chapters over Ruth’s. I felt the flashbacks in Ruth's were lengthy and even in skimming, I was still able to piece together Ruth’s past with ease. My favorite scene was probably the library! That gave me chills. Plenty of surprise twists to keep you guessing.

Great book full of suspense! It held my attention and kept me flipping through the pages long after I should have been asleep. If you like your heart pounding page turners, this one is for you.

I ended up really liking this book, despite a slow start. The story centers on mother and daughter Ruth and Catherine, whose dynamic changes when Catherine makes plans to move away. The chapters alternate between their POVs.

The first few chapters of the book move slowly and didn't seem to tie to what I thought the book was about. Once it's revealed that one or both women is keeping secrets and that there may be an ulterior motive for decisions they are making, the pace picks up greatly. The author did a good job in throwing in twists and then changing perspective yet again when you thought you were figuring it out. I enjoyed the fact that it went back and forth between both protagonists because it made it really easy to look at the same situation from both perspectives without getting too deep in one narrative. I had to suspend my disbelief a bit at some of the action- I enjoyed what I was reading but felt that it was just unrealistic. I liked the way it ended, and though everything wasn't tied up as cleanly as I normally want and there were some unanswered questions, it felt right for this particular story.

Overall, this was a great read and I recommend continuing even if those first few chapters are a bit slow. I have liked the other books I have read from this author and this was no exception. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Gone Tonight was an unputdownable thriller. It read like a cat and mouse game between mother and daughter, with the mother Ruth trying desperately to protect her daughter and keep her secrets hidden, and her daughter Catherine, secretly trying to figure out who her mom really is and what she's been hiding.

The book goes back and forth between Ruth and Catherine's POV's. We are learning about Ruth's past, while Catherine is trying to discover more about her mother, but at first is wildly off track. At first, Ruth seems like an unreliable narrator. I think this was a result of what Catherine was discovering about her mom in her chapters. But, when Ruth's chapters reveal the truth, it is really quite shocking.

The story is a slow burn, but it hooks you because there is enough foreshadowing to sense that there is so much to come. And when it comes, it is heart-pounding fear for Ruth and Catherine.

But, if I had a criticism, the crescendo of it all left me a bit disappointed. Elements of it felt a bit unrealistic. However, given this book raised the question of what role nature and genetics play in if a child is born to be a murderer, I could understand why some of it needed to play out the way it did.

Overall, this was an interesting and unique thriller that kept me gripped, and I'd definitely recommend it to thriller lovers.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the advanced digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought this was my first read by this author but then when I looked at her GR Bio and Bibliography, I realized that I have actually read and enjoyed other books that she co-authored with Greer Hendricks - An Anonymous Girl (which I loved) and The Wife Between Us, which I enjoyed.

Ava, is a 16-year old Junior in High School and has a problematic family life, with an abusive drunk for a mother who wields an unfair and unkind influence over her father. Ava might have been popular once but THE popular girl in the class, Britney (PG), has turned on her and made Ava the object of ridicule. Although Ava doesn't have much going for her, she is the most talented dancer in the school and despite being only a Junior she is one of the school's chosen Varsity Dance/Cheerleaders. PG's mom is the influential parent who abuses her power by assisting her daughter in the ultimate humiliations heaped on the powerless Ava (don't you just love parents who set abysmal behavior examples for their children?).

Jimmy, hunky waiter at the popular pizza resto in town (famous for its lasagna pizza), watches as both PiG and PiG mom bully Ava at the table and quickly befriends her. Although several years older than Ava, the two fall in love. Jimmy is a bit of a bad boy, and totally devoted to Ava. Coach of the team and varsity dance squad follows PG Mom's cues and eventually cuts Ava from the squad. As if things weren't bad enough, he orders Ava to come to his office after practice and sexually abuses her. Jimmy and Ava are complicit in a crime and Ava flees, abandoning her life and family and taking to the road, changing her appearance and her identity.

Remembering the movie where a pregnant Natalie Portman took up residence and delivered her baby in a Walmart, the homeless, 16-year-old Ruth learns she is pregnant and takes up temporary residence in a different convenience store chain. She spends the next 25 years, running, looking over her shoulder, and raising her daughter Catherine as best as she can on a steady diet of lies and lasagna pizza.

Although most of this character driven novel is predictable, I devoured it with relish. Both characters of Ruth and Catherine were strong and fully developed. There is a suspenseful climax but no real twists, definitely nothing unexpected, yet I got off the ride 100% satisfied. There was absolutely no need for the epilogue. Once the story ended, I really had no further interest in the characters.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for and ARC in exchange for my honest review. By the time I was able to start this novel it had already been published and an audio was available. I both read and listened to the novel and can say that the novel was brilliant, especially the ebook. The audio version was not as good, in particular because the narrator's inflection made little differentiation between the voices of the MC mother and daughter.

I loved this book so much! The back and forth and the overall development of the characters was something that made this book amazing! I liked the depth of each character.

GONE TONIGHT brings the emotion and the the thrills. Honestly, Pekkanen keeps getting better with every book I read by her. This domestic thriller has everything you could want.

Sarah Pekkanen and Greer Hendricks have made quite the name for themselves as the authors behind one of the buzziest duos in books. Their thrillers are always fast-paced and twisty, if not a little over the top. When I saw that Pekkanen was releasing a solo thriller, I was naturally intrigued. GONE TONIGHT
is a mother-daughter story infused with secrets, lies, and a life-changing betrayal. Catherine thinks she knows all there is to know about her mother Ruth.
She's a single mom who lives for her daughter, and doesn't require much. Just as Catherine prepares to move to Baltimore to start a dream nursing job, Ruth reveals a secret that threatens to thwart Catherine's plans. As cracks in Ruth's story begin to form, Catherine starts to question if she ever really knew her mother at all. I know I say that I fly through books all of the time (what can I say, I'm a fast reader!), but this was truly one where couldn't turn the pages (I mean, tapping your Kindle just doesn't have the same ring to it) fast enough. This is a book that's best to go into without knowing much at all, so it's a bit difficult to write about exactly why it worked so well for me. I found myself liking Catherine's POV far more than Ruth's (if we're being honest, Ruth really bothered me for about 90% of the novel), but if you're someone who's cool with unlikable characters, then I don't think you'll have a problem here. Some elements of the plot felt a little far-fetched, but this is a book where suspending your disbelief and just enjoying the wild narrative is key. A fun thriller that couldn't put down.

This was a fun, fast-paced, domestic thriller told in alternating chapters by secretive Ruth, and her adult daughter, Catherine who is desperate to find out what her mother is hiding.
Ruth’s backstory is slowly exposed, both revealing why she’s been lying to everyone for decades, and inadvertently putting herself and her daughter in danger.
There were a couple of “twists” that were easy to see coming, but that didn’t affect the enjoyment of the story.
Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this #arc of #gonetonight in exchange for an honest review.

I’m glad I finally got around to picking up my first Sarah Pekkanen book. I’ve been meaning to try out her work for quite a while but the timing was never right.

I ended up liking this mother/daughter thriller. I thought the plot was engaging. It was very suspenseful quite a few times. I thought the concept of this mother and daughter finding out things about each other that they never knew was great. It definitely made me excited to pick up other books by her.

What didn’t work so well for me was that the twists were somewhat predictable. They almost felt a bit anticlimactic compared to the buildup. I’ve heard the some of her other books do a better job at evening this out.

This critique is solely about the audiobook version. Kate Mara is a wonderful narrator. However, it was hard to differentiate between the two characters alternating chapters. I wish that they either had two separate narrators or that Mara changed her voice a bit. The points of view ended up feeling very similar because of this oversight.

That being said, I’m so glad I read this. It was a solid introduction. I’m excited to read some of her other works to see if they can knock it out of the park for me.