Gone Without a Trace

Gone Without a Trace

 

Mary Torjussen

 

 

*This review is based on an advanced reading copy. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a chance to read the book in exchange for an honest review*

 



Well, this one went downhill pretty fast.

 

I feel bad because the atmosphere of about 60% of the book was very spooky and I was feeling it... but I had a lot of problems with the plot and characters.

 

Our main character, Hannah, is very ambitious. She has a great job (on track for a promotion) and lives with her boyfriend of 4 years, Matt. She comes home one day to find that all of his possessions are gone and have been replaced with her old stuff from before he moved in. His contact and all messages have been deleted from her phone, he left his job, and she's panicking. She doesn't understand why he's gone.

 

This is the only redeeming quality of the book to me: the creepiness. There's things that happen to Hannah randomly, like something being moved in the house or random text messages of pictures of her after her boyfriend disappears. She seems to think he's behind all of it and becomes obsessed with finding him. We read from Hannah's perspective so we're just as lost as she is as to why he's gone... but this doesn't make any sense at the end.

 

There's a reason that Gone Girl and/or The Girl on the Train have done so well... and it's because of the plot twists. They were performed admirably and made sense to the story. This just felt like a really bad attempt at a story flip. The twist makes absolutely no sense, since we're reading in the main character's point of view and she conveniently leaves out certain knowledge... but if we're reading from her thoughts that means that she just leaves holes in her memories. I would have MAYBE been okay with the twist if it didn't feel like a cheesy soap opera at the end.

 

The characters were just horrible. I didn't give a shit about Hannah, she just bugged me. I have no idea why she was friends with Katie (she was miserable and copied everything Hannah did). Matt was a horrible love interest, James was weird, Sam was weird. Everyone was flat. I just didn't care. And that ending? After everything, you're still going to obsess over where he is? Straight up psycho.

 

I was really disappointed with how everything was brought together. It felt like the author rushed the ending and tried too hard to shock us with multiple surprises and it just wasn't executed properly.