Kim is watching her grandson Noah. She doesn’t mind watching him. She does it often for her daughter Tallulah, who is still a teenager, but she’s very responsible. She is raising Noah and going to college, studying social work, to make a better life for her and her son. Noah’s father, Zach, left Tallulah when she got pregnant, but now he’s back, trying to be a good boyfriend and father.
In fact, on this night, Zach had taken Tallulah for a night out. Kim wasn’t sure what was going to happen. She had found a ring box in Zach’s jacket pocket, but she’s not convinced that Tallulah is ready to marry him. Kim gives Noah his bath and puts him down, and then she waits for Tallulah to come home to find out what happened.
Kim wakes up the next morning to find that, aside from Noah, she’s alone in her home. Tallulah and Zach never came back the night before. As the hours go by and Tallulah still doesn’t appear, it’s obvious to Kim that something bad happened. She knows that Tallulah would never abandon Noah. So what happened that night?
A little over a year later, Shaun and Sophie move into the village. Shaun is the new head teacher at a boarding school in Lewisham. They’ve only been together for six months, meeting when mystery novelist went to Shaun’s old school for a talk. But when he suggested that she come to the country with him, she pictured writing her novels in the garden, taking long walks through the woods, living a simpler life than she has in London.
But then she sees the sign.
Written on cardboard and tacked up in their garden, it simply says, “Dig Here.” So she does. And what she finds is the first clue in the disappearance of Tallulah and Zach that anyone in the village has seen in a long time. Sophie and her internet skills team up with Kim and all the information she’s been able to discover about the last night she saw her daughter. But will that be enough to get the police to open the investigation and find out the truth of what happened the night she disappeared?
Lisa Jewell is back with another amazing thriller. Diving into the struggles of the family with questions and no answers as well as the mind of an armchair detective armed with little more than a laptop and curiosity, Jewell shows how crime can touch anyone, in small towns as well as big cities. The Night She Disappeared is another deftly plotted story with an amazing twist of an ending.
The more I read Lisa Jewell, the more I love her books. There are a lot of phenomenal thriller writers out there, but I haven’t noticed anyone writing the types of endings that I find in her books. She ends her books with hope, which doesn’t often happen in this genre. But I have so much respect for for what she’s able to accomplish, and I love to read her books for that very reason. It’s not a saccharine ending, tacked on like whipped cream on a piece of pie. It’s honest and organic, and it reminds me that there are good writers who can chart their own course and still craft a compelling story with characters that feel as real as those you see in your neighborhood. In other words, I really love this book.
Egalleys for The Night She Disappeared were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
