Finally got around to reading Tarryn Fisher's latest, and she does it again! I felt like I flew through this one.

I really enjoy her writing style. The setting (a psychiatric hospital on an island you can only get to and from by boat? No thanks) really added to the overall uneasiness of the story. It was pretty twisty, and the ending had me surprised!

This had potential to be a five-star for me but the timeline switched back and forth a lot and I felt like I was missing information during certain parts. Having said that, this was still a pretty solid thriller from Tarryn Fisher.

Thank you to Harlequin Books & Grayson House for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great page turner of a book. I enjoyed the characters and enjoyed the plot, that kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. The. main character feels unreliable, while you take in the unbelievable story of a childhood plagued by the kidnapping of a sibling and after math of the experience. What happens when no one believes you - you take things into your own hands and explore the dark side, achieving a college degree that gets you a job to test your theory. Your heart goes out to the family and sister that experienced such a tragedy but what's true and what is just the lingering memories of a teenager from a traumatic experience from years ago. You'll be surprised all the way up until the last page!

A quick read, picked up at the end. Unfortunately, I felt bored up until about 80% but I pushed through because I really wanted to know what the heck happened to the twin.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this novel. I enjoyed it and will be recommending it.

✨Book Review✨
Good Half Gone by Tarryn Fisher
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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A low 4. The first half of this book I truly couldn't put down. It was so well written, easy to get into, and the audiobook narrator was great. At about the 60 percent mark things went a little downhill for me. I still enjoyed it, but I didn't love the turn it took. I also thought the ending was much too rushed, and ultimately, I wished there was a more satisfying and realistic resolution.

I struggled to get through this novel. The main character is unlikable and felt very unreliable. Then in the last of the novel the action begins and is complete out of left field, and unbelievable. It was like there was a thread of a plot then it was combined with another plot idea for a different novel and the end result is Good Half Gone.

I want to thank Netgalley & Harlequin Trade Publishing, Graydon House for an ARC of this book.

Ugh I wanted to love this book. It sounded and started out promising but all of a sudden I just found myself not caring. The characters were all just dumb and I hated them all. The twist at the end just made me want to throw my book across the room. Overall thoughts . No! Just no

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the E-ARC.

All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.

This book was one of my least favorite books by Tarryn. I expected a suspenseful story that I found didn’t have any “meat” or suspense until the end. I didn’t feel invested in the plot or the characters.

No surprise that I loved this book! Tarryn is a favorite author of mine and this book did not disappoint!

had a great time and was definitely on the edge of my seat at the last part.
I found this book to be a really easy to read and I think it’s a great one for a beginner to thriller.

if it's a book written by tarryn fisher: SIGN ME UP.

i never know what to expect when she writes a thriller and good half gone surpasses my expectations 100%
i never saw the twist coming and i was glued to the pages to continue and find out what happens next.
her writing style is unlike any i have seen before.

10/10 stars.

Thanks NetGalley for the free ARC.

I didn’t care for this book. I had to push myself to finish it. It wasn't a can't put it down type of read. I was initially drawn when the two sisters, Iris and Piper, head to the movies together. Piper disappears in broad daylight and although the police do investigate, the case soon goes cold. Iris just can't let the case go and it takes over her life. She spends all her time trying to solve the murder and even ends working at a psychiatric hospital where she believes the murder is. The story was hard to fellow and was all over the place. I felt l knew the plot and twists before they happened. Some of the story felt over the top and unbelievable.

This was a fast paced thriller that I raced through quickly. I did guess all the twists so it wasn't as exciting as it could have been but I still really enjoyed it!

whattttt did i just read???

this one’s a wild ride. so much that left me jaw open, unsure what to come next - but that’s pretty typical with any tarryn novel.

howwww does she get better & better???

I didn’t care for this book. It started off good with two sisters going to the movies together and one of them is taken and she is never found. The other sister spends her life trying to find out what happened. Even getting a job where the killer is. I felt this story was all over the place and the revelation at the end sounded like a soap opera with how unbelievable it was.

Iris and her twin sister, Piper, were just fifteen years old when Iris witnessed Piper’s kidnapping. Piper was grabbed by three men who also took Iris’s phone, so she ran back into the movie theater where the manager let her use the phone there to summon help and confirmed for police that Iris had indeed arrived with a girl who looked exactly like her. The girls lived with their grandmother, Betty, because their mother, Virginia, was an addict, incapable of caring for them, who lost custody when a teacher requested a wellness check. Every year, on the anniversary of Piper’s abduction, Iris listens to the recording of the 911 call she placed from the lobby of the theater. From her perspective, the police were slow to respond, asking questions that seemed irrelevant. “They were stuck on the phone thing. They wanted to know why the men would take my phone.” The police insinuated that Piper voluntarily left with the three men, abandoning her sister at the theater. Officers patronized and placated Iris, who was “hysterical” and already riddled with shame because “I’d lost my sister. Gran told me to take care of her, and now she was gone,” she recalls. Piper had become “boy crazy” and expelled for engaging in inappropriate behavior with them on campus. Even though Piper claimed to have changed – and become religious -- Gran was emphatic: “Don’t let her out of your sight. I mean in. I’m not raising her babies.” Iris learns that Piper’s kidnappers were supposed to grab both of them and is further engulfed in survivor's guilt.

Three years after Piper’s disappearance, Gran and Iris were able to move into a cozy Seattle home left to Gran by an aunt. It is there they are raising Callum, now nine years old. Thirteen months after Piper vanished, he was left, with the umbilical cord still attached, on Virginia’s doorstep in a box with a blanket and a note: “Iris, daughter of no one, please take care of my son. His name is Callum.” It was signed, “Twin,” and Iris instantly recognized the handwriting as Piper’s. Iris has never understood why, if Piper is still alive, she would leave her child and, more curiously, why she would leave his with their mother.

Iris and Piper were very different. Piper was popular, while Iris had only a few friends with whom she did not interact outside of school. They fought, deliberately antagonizing each other as only siblings can. But they loved each other and because of their experiences with their mother, who would disappear during drug-induced hazes, leaving the girls on their own for days at a time, “Piper wouldn’t disappear for a night and not tell us. She was a free spirit but a considerate one.”

Iris is now twenty-three years old. Virigina, an unabashed narcissist, is serving a five-year prison sentence for armed robbery and maintains she is “born again.” At sixty-seven, Gran has already survived an ischemic stroke and heart attack, and Iris worries about her health, always careful not to upset her. Iris, who has spent years balancing her studies, caring for Callum, and obsessively searching for Piper, has been accepted into an internship program at Shoal Island Hospital to which she was encouraged to apply by one of her professors. It is a private hospital for the mentally ill, teetering on a cliff and reachable only by ferry. She is convinced that the man responsible for Piper’s abduction resides there. And she is going to at last learn her sister’s fate.

Dr. Leo Grayson is a renowned celebrity psychotherapist who holds two doctorate degrees and has authored several bestselling books. But he has been out of the spotlight for a number of years, and now in his mid-forties, Internet searches only produce the same photos of him taken years ago. He is the only doctor on staff at Shoal Island, which opened in 1944 but has been renovated many times since. Originally an army outpost, it later served as a prison and a home for unwed mothers. Only forty patients are housed there, each one a violent offender who never stood trial because they were ruled incompetent to do so by the courts. Iris will not be dissuaded from breaking any rule necessary in order to access D Hall where five patients are merely housed in solitary confinement, with no effort made to rehabilitate them. She is warned never to venture there unless accompanied by the doctor. But Iris is anxious to do just that, and participate in their therapy sessions, because she has studied all five of them and is certain. “One of them killed my sister.” She does not expect to find herself attracted to the handsome and charming Dr. Grayson . . . and confiding in him. Could that prove to be a fatal mistake?

Through a somewhat unreliable first-person narrative from Iris, which alternates between the past and present, author Tarryn Fisher relates a story that is heartbreaking and full of shocking twists. Iris is a sympathetic character. A steadfast sister who, despite conflicts with her twin, remans devoted to finding out what happened to her and seeking justice not just for Piper, but also for Callum, the innocent little boy who has never known his mother. Iris immediately devoted herself to Callum, enrolling in a home school program so she could serve as his surrogate mother. She adores Gran, a scrappy, streetwise woman who has seen more than her share of disappointment during a life as an exotic dancer, prison guard, and, eventually, librarian. Iris lovingly describes her as “resourceful, tough, smart – and one hundred percent unapologetic. My hero.” She is all too aware of who and what Virginia is, and fiercely protective of her granddaughters and little Callum. The novel succeeds as an examination of the family dynamics, especially the sisters’ relationship. Fisher also credibly depicts the teenage struggles of Iris and Piper, who have vastly different personalities, but are both impacted by childhood traumas. It is also an indictment of police officers who are embroiled in their own scandals and far too quick to write Piper off as just a troubled girl who decided to run away.

Iris is certain that only Gran knows the real reason she applied for the internship, but as Fisher gradually reveals clues to Piper’s fate, it becomes clear that the missing girl naively got involved with people who had nefarious motives. And Iris has brazenly but perhaps foolishly embarked on a mission that has placed her in grave danger.

The mystery surrounding Piper’s kidnapping is an intriguing exploration of contemporary topics including drug abuse and human trafficking, in addition to teenage angst. The gothic atmosphere at Shoal Island effectively heightens the dramatic tension. It is an ominous, oppressive, and frightening setting populated by interesting characters who may or may not compound the dangers Iris faces. The story's pace accelerates to an action-packed climax, but that aspect of the story is less successful. The ending arrives abruptly and feels rushed, although it is replete with surprises that readers will never quite be able to guess. Fisher provides answers, resolving all aspects of the mindboggling story and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion with a distinctly cinematic quality, albeit through a circuitous route that is ridiculously far-fetched, even for a psychological thriller, a genre which regularly requires readers to suspend their disbelief to varying degrees.

Despite the ending, Good Half Gone is entertaining and absorbing, and readers will find themselves unable to resist cheering for Iris, Gran, and, of course, Callum.

I really liked this book but the suspense was too slow. It was very predictable and honestly a complete rip off of the movie shutter island

I've tried a few books by this author and I think I have discovered she just isn't for me. I can't seem to relate to any characters and the story writing always starts out amazing, but the plot twists never pan out. I always seem to be able to guess who or what or where. This really disconnects me from the story as well as the characters.

I think that the author played this book way to safe and could've went other routes with the story, not wanting to rock the boat though she chose the safest way to continue the story. This pulled me out of the reading far to much. Again, I think this is just an author that isn't for me.

This one was weird. It was one of those books with a messy plot; those types of books confuse me because I’m never sure if the chaos is gritty realism or just bad plotting. Anyway, our narrator is Iris Walsh, and she’s had a hard life – absent father, drug addicted and thoroughly selfish mother, and at 15, a rocky relationship with her twin sister Piper. Piper is stereotypically the pretty, popular twin, in contrast to bookish Iris. They live with their grandmother, who is not conventionally grandmotherish, but who does take good care of the twins and loves them very much.

Things get exponentially worse when Piper is kidnapped in front of Iris from a movie theater. It takes the police a while to even believe Iris’s account of what happened, and by the time they make any sort of effort to get out the word about a missing teenager from the wrong side of the tracks, Piper is long gone.

About a decade later (the timeline was…challenging at times, and I stopped trying to make sense of things based on the information that I had), Iris is living with her son and her grandmother, and plotting to get a job at an asylum on an island off Seattle. Iris thinks she’ll discover some truth about who took her sister and why, but the details take a long time to come out, and when they do they don’t bear close scrutiny.

Anyway, Iris gets involved with her boss, the charismatic director of the institution, and tries to get closer to the truth. All this while she ignores the weirdness around her – a worker goes missing; various other workers seem to be suffering from substance issues or just plain falling apart. The dénouement was batshit even by my fairly expansive batshit monitor. And that was before I read a Goodreads review that pointed out a gaping and obvious plot hole that I’d missed which made the ending even more insane and ridiculous.

I’ll give Good Half Gone a bit of leeway for being relatively entertaining for most of the story. Still, I’m giving this a C-.

a very atmospheric thriller that takes place on an island in the Puget Sound. When one twin girl disappears her sister sets out to find what happened to her, even though it meant taking a job at a hospital for the criminally insane.