30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 3
Book 3/30
I figured out about half of what was going on here before it was revealed, but it didn’t matter because this book was really well written. This is only my second book by Lisa Jewell, and she is two for two (both books about teenagers who have disappeared, and they have another similarity as well but that’s spoilers). I read this in a day, staying up two hours past my bedtime to finish it (and my bedtime is sacred).
The main character here is Laurel, the mother of the disappeared teenager. Ellie Mack walked out of the house one day to study at the library, and never came back. It’s been ten years and Laurel has only recently been coming out of her grief, upon the discovery of Ellie’s body. She meets a man named Floyd and falls in love with him, and when she meets his nine year old daughter, the similarities to her own missing child are unmissable. From there, the story of what happened to Ellie unfolds little by little.
We also get POV chapters from Ellie herself (one opens the book), Ellie’s tutor, and Floyd, but those are nowhere near as prevalent as the Laurel chapters; she is definitely the main character.
The plot here was very out there, but the way it was written and structured kept me glued to the pages. I enjoyed the complicated moral lives of these characters, and the portrait of grief and moving on that was Laurel’s arc. My only real gripe is that in her author’s notes, Jewell mentions that her original manuscript was even more out there, and her editor helped her make it work, but I am incredibly curious what that first manuscript looked like and just how weird it was. I hate when authors talk about other versions of books because my curiosity monster goes into overdrive, knowing it will never be satisfied.
If you haven’t tried a Lisa Jewell yet, this would be a good one.