Then She Was Gone

Product Information

Noelle gets pregnant but loses the baby. Around this time, she starts tutoring Ellie. She becomes obsessed with Ellie and her seemingly perfect life. Jewell is a terrific storyteller, and I raced through this entire book on a flight. While I certainly would have loved a little more surprise, I still thought this was a captivating and compelling read, and if you like thrillers, you may very well enjoy this one.

All these apparent loose threads begin to be tied to Ellie’s disappearance. Meanwhile, the book explores the reactions of various family members to the tragic event, showing that Laurel was not the only one damaged by the loss. Likewise, law enforcement efforts are summarized: Ellie was last seen on closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage captured the morning she vanished. Though the police are diligent, conducting house-to-house searches and pursuing tips received from the public, they find nothing. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary—beyond Laurel’s insistence that her daughter had no reason to flee home—law enforcement concludes and steadfastly maintains that Ellie was a runaway. They speculate she may be living on the European continent. As you may imagine Laurel is devastated, barely holding up but one day she meets Floyd at a cafe, sharing a carrot cake and the charming, mysterious, charismatic mathematician blows her mind. And another surprising thing about this man is her 9 years old daughter named Poppy who lives with her, has great resemblance with her deceased daughter.

Epilogue

When her daughter's bones are discovered years later, Laurel feels she can finally move on with her life. She meets a man at a cafe not long after the burial of her favorite child. It was possible, she thought, that Hanna had met a man, but unlikely. Hannah hadn't had a boyfriend, not one, ever. Someone once mooted the theory that Hanna felt too guilty to have a boyfriend because her little sister would never have one. The same theory could also be applied to her miserable flat and her nonexistent social life.

She was fifteen, her mother’s golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone. You know, how you get to forty and you suddenly stop giving a sh** about all the stupid things you worried about your whole life. Well, nine year old Poppy is already there." I think Lisa Jewell has written a chilling novel of suspense, but it is also a book about the power of maternal love, forgiveness and healing and never giving up.From Noelle's perspective, in the past) After Noelle kidnaps Ellie, she keeps her in the basement. She gives her the hamsters as pets. One day, she drugs her and soon Ellie realizes she's pregnant. Noelle pretends to Floyd that she's pregnant. However, a month before the baby is due, Floyd breaks it off anyway. Before she went missing, Ellie had been struggling with math class. Ellie asked for a tutor, and Noelle Donnelly was recommended. It went well, but Noelle started to weird Ellie out, so Ellie stopped the lessons. After the lessons stopped, Noelle runs into Ellie and offers her some practice materials. Ellie, not wanting to be rude, accepts. They go to Noelle's house, and Ellie isn't seen again.

Symbolic of the desire to move on once closure has been reached, Part Two opens with Laurel encountering, apparently by accident, an attractive eligible bachelor in a neighborhood café. He is American-born anglophile Floyd Dunn, a moderately successful author of scientific books. The two strangers exchange personal information during a leisurely conversation. Floyd is separated from his wife and is the father of two daughters. The older of the two, Sara-Jade, known as “SJ,” is a product of his marriage, and usually lives with her mother. The younger child, Poppy, just nine, is the result of an extended but long-past affair. Poppy was left with Floyd—who is ecstatic to have her—when she was four years old, after which time her mother took off for parts unknown. A jewel. A treasure. And even though I had an inkling about where this was going, it didn't diminish my pleasure in this read at all. The reasons behind Ellie’s disappearance come to light through Ellie’s POV. Her mother, Laurel, also has a main voice in the story.At the same time the actual mystery component to it was less satisfying than I was expecting as well. While the mystery and suspense of what happened to Ellie is absolutely at the forefront of the book throughout the entire novel, the resolution of Ellie’s disappearance is more straightforward than I had been hoping for. This is not a cliched version of fiction with a bunch of peripatetic perfunctory characters with a mandatory twist at the end to consider it as a thriller. I was able to predict the ending by around 30% in the book. This book is the tragic life story of Ellie, which will bring tears to your eyes if you are a compassionate human being. Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over twenty-five languages. She lives in north London with her husband, two teenage daughters and the best dog in the world.