Thank you to ThrillerBookLovers Promotions, Crooked Lane Books, #partner, for an advanced e- copy of Since She’s Been Gone in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Published: February 6, 2024
Summary:
An emotionally charged, dual-timeline suspense set between L. A. and NYC, this debut novel is perfect for fans of The Last Thing He Told Me and Luckiest Girl Alive.
A clinical psychologist is thrown into her dark past as she races to uncover the truth about her mother’s death while struggling with her own mental health.
Can we ever truly know the people we love?
Losing her mother to a hit-and-run at age 15 threw Beatrice “Beans” Bennett’s life into turmoil. Bereft, she developed a life-threatening eating disorder, and went through a challenging recovery process which paved the way for her work as a clinical psychologist decades later.
When a new patient arrives at her office and insists that Beans’s mother is still alive—and in danger—Beans is forced to revisit her past in order to uncover the truth. She learns the “patient” is a member of a notorious family that owns a drug company largely responsible for the national opioid epidemic, and that her mother was once tangled in their web. In a race against time—and her mother’s assailants—while once again facing the disorder she thought she’d put behind her, Beans discovers that, like herself, her mother had a devastating secret.
With its fast-moving, edge-of-your-seat action and intimate look at mental health, Since She’s Been Gone will keep readers in its grasp long after the last page.
My thoughts:
It’s not too often that I read a thriller, and a debut at that, that also has me emotionally wrecked by the end. Yet, that is exactly what this one managed to do. I do want to preface this review by saying the author begins this book with a note and a content warning…please take the time to read it. This is not an easy book to read by any means and there many triggers, so proceed with caution.
Now that that’s out of the way, I can’t tell you how much I loved this book! It grabbed me right from the beginning and did not let up until the very end. I have never been as invested in a character as I was with Beatrice “Beans” Bennett. And I loved how we got to be part of her life both in the now and then sections. The dual timeline works so well here, as the past sections where Beans is dealing with the aftermath of losing her mother and her eating disorder is just such an emotional journey, where the present sections are full of suspense as Beans tries to find the truth about what really happened to her mother.
What really strikes me about this book is the deep dive we get into the psychological aspects of eating disorders and I loved how the author does that here. Told from Beans’ point of view, we are privy to her internal dialog throughout the book, seeing how she handles different struggles throughout her life, especially during her most challenging times. It is here that we are able to see what it is like to live with the eating disorder, or ED, as it is referred to in the book, and how it often takes over her life. This is just so powerful. I feel like I learned so much from this book.
I finished this one with tears in my eyes…it was just so good. This is such a great debut and I cannot wait to read more from this author!
