And People Say We Should Read More: A Book to Turn Anyone Off Reading
While not all bestsellers are horribly written books, Then She Was Gone, by Lisa Jewell, (originally published 2017, republished 2022) is one of those books that gives modern bestsellers a bad reputation. Unfortunately, like most bestsellers, the blurb was written to make the book sound interesting – and, due to the nature of the book, sound like a completely different book. In short, the PVCC Book Club was completely conned.
Centered around the mysterious disappearance of 15-year-old Ellie, the focus of the book is on Ellie’s bitter mother, Laurel. At the beginning of the novel, distraught at the disappearance of her favorite and youngest child of three, Laurel is living alone ten years after Ellie’s disappearance, having distanced herself from her remaining family. And then, of course, she meets a handsome man who has a young daughter who is the splitting image of Laurel’s missing Ellie.
From there the mystery attempts to take off: what happened to Ellie? Will this book have any character development? Did Ellie really run away like the police thought? Why is Laurel such an unlikeable character? What does Laurel’s handsome suitor have to do with Ellie? Did the person who wrote the blurb read the book beforehand?
The blurb made it sound like the book was centered on the mystery of Ellie’s disappearance, but not too long in, it seemed pretty clear what had happened to Ellie. There was no mystery to keep me reading, and I certainly was not going to stay for the two-dimensional characters. The premise turned my stomach, and everything in the book seemed a little stereotypical for my taste. Ellie was pretty with a popular boyfriend, so she is the one who disappears. Laurel is so traumatized by Ellie’s disappearance that she no longer appears to care for her remaining kids. However, she still panics when she goes to her other daughter’s house and finds it empty. So, logically enough, she proceeds to call all the phone numbers she has for that daughter. But when her daughter answers, Laurel hangs up without saying anything. Essentially, Laurel plays the part of a traumatized but loving mother who fails to express her feelings and then does not understand why her kids do not like her. If I wanted to read stereotypes like this, I would read Le Morte D’Arthur, which at least has literary merit.
I was assured by my Book Club compatriots who did manage to make it to the end that the ending was very predictable and that the book read like a Colleen Hoover book (and not in a good way). Some thought that it had tipped over the edge from terrible to “it’s so bad that it’s really entertaining.” I would argue, however, that it fell straight into the pit of “it’s so bad that I don’t know how it got published.”
Probably the only saving grace of this book is that it is really easy to read, not that it saved the book for me. I blew through the first 54 pages in less than 30 minutes, partly because of the writing, but mostly because the font was big and the chapters were arranged to take up a lot of space.
If you are debating between removing your wisdom teeth and reading this book, I would suggest removing your wisdom teeth. At least at the end of the procedure, something productive will have occurred to offset all that pain.
