Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

Ellie was fifteen, in love and the apple of her mother's eye when she disappeared. Laurel will never stop hoping that she is found, but realises this is an unlikely dream. It's time to let go - it's already destroyed the family. What a tragedy. So sad.

So Laurel moves on, as one does. She meets Floyd, who seems too good to be true, and has a daughter who looks very much like Ellie. 

Lisa Jewell wrote of this book - "Then She Was Gone is my fifteenth novel and probably my darkest to date. I can't tell you too much here about the genesis of the book because that would be a total spoiler, but I can tell you that I went down a few wrong turnings on the way to the finished book and that when I finally worked out where I was supposed to be going the whole thing came racing out of me pages at a time and I wrote it in just over ten weeks - which was pretty exhilarating!"

That intrigued me. And I have to say I LOVED how this book turned out. Dark - yes. Sad - I already said that. True to life - absolutely. The characters were great, and the plot exceptional. The family inter-relationships, as usual, sound as clear as bells through all the witty dialogue.

Another eminently readable unputdownable Jewell.

5 stars

ISBN: 9781780896427

You may also enjoy I Found You or The Girls by Lisa Jewell. Or Black Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin.