Sometimes I finish a book and just think, ‘Wow!’ This was one of those times. Laurel thought she had left the dark times behind her, but has she unwittingly invited them back through her door? Who uses some of the same quirky figures of speech Ellie did. A girl who looks surprisingly like Ellie. Until she meets her new man’s nine-year old daughter. She plans a big family birthday bash to reconnect them all. She apologizes to her ex for refusing to live the last ten years, and for hating him for being able to. She takes steps to reconnect with Hannah.

She meets a charming man and lets him take her to dinner. There is a funeral and Laurel feels as though by burying Ellie she has been given a second chance at her own life. A few days later there is a second call: Ellie’s remains have been found. It reflects perfectly how she feels.Įllie’s rucksack has been found.

She makes cursory visits to her mom at the hospice, but Laurel’s life is grey and dull and pointless. She doesn’t speak to her son and hasn’t met his partner. She cleans her daughter Hannah’s apartment weekly, speaks to her even less often than that. She’s moved to a dull, undecorated flat where she does little more than run the hoover once a week to maintain it. She works three days a week at something she doesn’t find very important. Ten years after Ellie’s disappearance, a divorced Laurel is living half a life. Why would someone who had everything leave it all behind? When she disappeared, the police spoke of runaways, but Laurel has never really believed that. At fifteen, Ellie was dating the best-looking boy in her school and getting top marks in all her classes. Ellie, her tumultuous teenage daughter, who lacked the surliness of her sister and the indifference of her brother was Laurel’s golden girl. Mothers shouldn’t have favorites, but Laurel did. A tale of a missing girl, a mother’s shattered life and the gradual rebuilding of a family, this twisting, turning mystery will have you reading into the wee hours of the morning. Jewell’s Then She Was Gone since I finished the last page of her stellar I Found You.

Then she was gone barnes and noble