Will I love The Night She Disappeared?

To be honest, I could have picked multiple books by Lisa Jewell. She’s my favorite thriller writer, and many of her books use close-knit communities to set up mysteries in which I constantly change my mind about who I can trust. Exactly what I love about domestic noir!

In this book, the setting is a picturesque village in the Surrey Hills, where teenage parents Tallulah and Zach head out on a date to the local pub and never come home. There are two aspects of the seemingly idyllic community that really sucked me in: a mysterious mansion just outside the… show more.

This was the first Lisa Jewell mystery I read. When I finished it, I went on to read several more. Kim is thirty-nine and raising her grandson Noah because her daughter Tallulah has disappeared. She and her boyfriend Zach, who lived with Kim, have gone out for the evening and never returned home. The police discover they ended up spending the evening with a group of young people from a nearby school. As the story progresses, we learn more about these young people and about Tallulah's secret relationship with their leader, a volatile woman. And finally we find out what… show more.

Though the daughter’s story in this novel is full of twists, I connected with her mother who must hold her life together while being a full-time grandma to her missing daughter’s baby, while experiencing a daily living nightmare. While desperately trying to find out why her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend vanished after a date night, she must also step in to care for her daughter’s baby. This story changes POV from the mother and from the daughter’s, building the suspense as the daughter’s POV flashbacks draw closer to the “night she disappeared.” What I really love about Lisa Jewell’s… show more.