Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen – a Review

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Description:
No one ever disappears completely…

You leave for work one morning.

Another day in your normal life.

Until you come home to discover that your boyfriend has gone.
His belongings have disappeared.
He hasn’t been at work for weeks.
It’s as if he never existed.

But that’s not possible, is it?

And there is worse still to come.

Because just as you are searching for him
someone is also watching you.

Review:

Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen is a psychological thriller.  I had mixed feelings about this book, which I will explain a bit later in this review.  The premise of the story was a good one, which catches your attention from the start.

Hannah Moore has just received good news on her job, with a promotion possibly upcoming.  She buys a bottle of wine to celebrate the wonderful news with her boyfriend, Matt.   When she arrives home after being away for a couple of days, she is shocked at what she sees.  Matt is gone, and everything in the house that they shared is missing, and replaced with all her old stuff before he moved in with her; even her computer emails &  phone messages, etc were erased.  It was just like Matt never existed; which was a great start to this story.  Needless to say, Hannah was upset, not knowing why Matt left.

We get to meet Hannah’s friends Kate and James, who are the ones she goes to for help.  Both of them try to understand why Matt would have left, asking Hannah questions about them having problems.  Hannah insists nothing was wrong. It is here the story escalates to Hannah spending all her free time trying to find Matt, which will affect her job, which begins to suffer.  Hannah becomes obsessed with researching on the computer, calling his old job or friends to no avail.  A short time later, she begins to get texts on her phone from a strange number “I am Home now”, which leads her to believe Matt is coming home.  He didn’t, but someone was coming to her house leaving hints.   As we get to the last 1/3 of the book, things change drastically, with multiple twists; which was exciting.

Now for my mixed feelings:  Once I was ¼ into the book, I did not like Hannah; not at all.  She was obnoxious, obsessive, hysterical, nasty at times and totally a disaster. At first I understood her boyfriend left her, but she was an adult (30’s) who after the initial shock, should have moved on. If he didn’t want her to find him, that should have been enough.  She didn’t even care or do anything on her job; she treated her friends bitterly.  It got to the point that I couldn’t stand her, and this went on for too long. When we got to the twist, which was sort of a surprise,  her behavior was that of a wacky crazy women. Then as things come to a climax (no spoilers), we get some more answers and twists; but the epilogue ending left me with a bitter taste.

This book was promising, the writing was good, a good thriller storyline, with some surprises and at times exciting.  But I could not sympathize with the lead character, to the point of disliking her so much, it affected my take on the book. 

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher