Book review: After You Were Gone

After You Had been Gone opens on the day younger mom Abbie loses sight of her daughter Sarah whereas procuring at a crowded market.

Six years later, with Sarah’s disappearance nonetheless unsolved, Abbie has tentatively begun rebuilding her life with new husband Murray and his older kids. Simply days after her wedding ceremony, nonetheless, a anonymous stranger begins calling, promising details about Sarah if Abbie carries out a sequence of duties designed to tear down her newfound happiness.

The novel’s chapters alternate between the present-day storyline and flashbacks to occasions from Abbie’s previous. These flashback sections – threaded with simply as a lot page-turning rigidity as the primary plot – comply with Abbie as she leaves residence at 18, struggles via single motherhood, and offers with the rapid aftermath of Sarah’s disappearance.

Wakefield’s abilities as an award-winning young-adult creator shine via in her depictions of a teenaged Abbie craving for independence as she navigates blue-collar suburbia and dingy flatshares.

In her preliminary dealings with the thriller voice, Abbie spends extra time ready round for directions and finishing up the caller’s calls for than driving the plot ahead on her personal phrases. Because the stakes are raised and she or he attracts nearer to discovering the reality, nonetheless, the dynamic shifts and she or he emerges as a posh, memorable protagonist. The novel concludes with a sequence of satisfying and unpredictable twists as Abbie’s previous quickly catches up together with her current.

A powerful theme all through After You Had been Gone is that of motherhood: what makes somebody an excellent (or unhealthy) mom, and the way do they navigate this identification inside their household and neighborhood? Abbie’s sophisticated relationships together with her personal mom, her sister, her stepchildren, and even her husband’s ex-wife, make for a thought-provoking backdrop towards which to discover the influence of Sarah’s disappearance. Abbie’s formidable mom performs a very important function all through the novel, and it might have been fascinating to delve deeper into the explanations behind their uneasy alliance.

Wakefield ­delivers compulsive, heart-thumping suspense in spades, and within the midst of this additionally provides us a nuanced portrait of the wide-reaching results of household trauma.

Crammed with characters with advanced motives and needs and distinct methods of responding to grief, Abbie’s world feels vividly actual and recognisable, making her story all of the extra haunting.

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After You Had been Gone is revealed by Textual content Publishing and out there now.

Vikki Wakefield is the creator of 5 younger grownup novels, the newest of which, That is How We Change the Ending, received the Youngsters’s Ebook Council of Australia’s 2020 Ebook of the 12 months Award for Older Readers. Wakefield will talk about her new thriller in dialog with Jo Case (InReview’s Diary of a Bookseller columnist)  at an occasion at Burnside Library on October 20 (particulars right here).

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Originally published at Gold Coast News HQ