Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book is a whole lot of page-turning fun. the synopsis reminded me of Before We Met, another british psychological/domestic suspense novel in which a woman’s husband fails to return from a business trip, and the details of his dark past that she discovers as she desperately tries to track him down.
this one is much more complicated and twisty, and it’s ultimately more satisfying for the reader, even though there were some bits i didn’t love.
it’s about a woman named hannah who returns to liverpool from a business trip in oxford to find that matt, her live-in boyfriend of four years, has suddenly moved out of their house, taking all his stuff with him, down to the ketchup in the fridge, as well as everything they’d bought as a couple in the paroxysms of nesting, and in their place he has replaced that stuff with what had been there before he moved in – hannah’s old tv, stereo, and coffee table brought out from storage, erasing the last four years of décor. not only that, matt has removed himself from every social media site, and deleted all texts, photos, and voice messages from hannah’s phone and computer, as though he never existed.
hannah is stunned and humiliated. she had no idea that matt was unhappy in their relationship, and finds it unspeakably cruel that he would leave her so abruptly, without answers, never to know what happened to him, and she tries to pinpoint where it all went wrong:
When we went for an Indian meal the week before he left, did he know he’d never return to that restaurant? When he lay in bed beside me that last night, was he relieved he’d soon be gone? When he felt me kiss his cheek the morning he left, what was he thinking?
That was the moment I died for him, wasn’t it? One last kiss and I was gone. I just hadn’t known it.
the lack of closure is maddening to hannah, as well as matt’s complete erasure of himself.
I could understand him removing everything that belonged to him, but why take my memories, too? All my photos of him had gone, all my texts. Not one email remained. There wasn’t a T-shirt of his I could sleep in, there wasn’t even a mug I could hold. How long would it be before I couldn’t picture his face or remember what he’d said to me?
maddening is the operative word, and hannah quickly becomes obsessed; devoting all her time and energy to finding matt and an explanation, at the expense of her career, her friendships, and her hygiene. and it’s such a drastic descent – she goes from a high-powered and ambitious senior manager at an accounting firm on the verge of being promoted to director to … a mess. and with every decision she makes that jeopardizes her life, you’re yelling “NOOOOOOO” at the book, but you’re kind of ghoulishly fascinated to see what will happen next, especially once the spooky stuff starts happening.
now, the ending. or rather, the reveal. there’s nothing wrong with it at all – it’s perfectly supported by the text, and i’d even considered it as a possibility while i was reading. but it’s the part after the reveal i felt was a bit of a drag.
this section is going to be both spoilery and full of “things i wish had been handled differently,” both of which you should avoid until you’ve read the book yourself.
View Spoiler »on a personal note – i am not a lady who draws a bath and relaxes with a glass of wine and a book, but i had been reading a bunch of books in a row where women did just that, and i was feeling like less of a woman for that not being a part of my “me-time,” so i gave it a go. and although i lack the range of experience to be so confident with this assertion, i don’t care: this book is a perfect wine-and-bath selection. so i encourage you: bathe, read, imbibe, enjoy.
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four stars cats for the anticipation, three stars cats for resolution…
full review to come after i sort it all out…
