Good as Gone

I'm going to start this by saying that this is one of the best books I've read in a while. Yes, I'm a suspense junkie, but I thought this one was especially well done. If ever I find myself trying to piece things together as I go and feel like I just can't quite figure it out, I know it's something that I enjoy.

Good as Gone is the story of Julie, a girl who was kidnapped from her home as a child, and her family. As the events of Julie's disappearance unfold around them, their bonds as a family are questions, as well as their own personal identities and motives. What does it mean to be a family? What does it mean to even be yourself when being you isn't easy?

If you like suspense novels, this one is fast paced and easy to get through. I show more finished it in a couple nights and found it truly hard to put down. I liked the shifting of perspectives as I felt it allowed me to get a better glimpse into what everyone was feeling. Even if given a single perspective option, I think I'd still prefer to do it as the author did. It never felt forced or awkward or confusing, only highly enjoyable.

What did I think?: I really did love this book. It'll go to the top of my list in regards to books I recommend, and it'll be hard to top when choosing my next book. I thought the characters were fantastically multi-faceted, and if staying up until 2am reading is any proof of a good book then this one passes that test.

Who should read it?: If you enjoy suspense novels or stories of kidnappings, then I recommend this one for you. It's not action packed necessarily, more a reverse telling of a truly life changing event.


*I was provided with a copy of this book in order to conduct this honest review.*










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Good as Gone

It's the mother of a missing child's most cherished wish: the child, returned.

But what if you had doubts? What if your long-lost daughter wasn't being completely honest about the circumstances surrounding her abduction? What if you started to wonder if your daughter - your real daughter - might be dead after all? Who might the woman living with you be?

Amy Gentry's astonishing debut explores exactly this scenario.

What's it about?

Eight years ago beautiful, innocent Julie Whitaker was kidnapped in the middle of the night from her own bedroom.

Since then, her family have barely survived, hoping for her return while knowing it's nearly impossible.

And then the nearly impossible happens: Julie is home. Or is she? And what did happen show more to her while she was gone?

What's it like?

Suspenseful. Chilling. Cleverly constructed.

I loved this book and read it in a couple of days, sneaking pages into the smallest crevices of my days (Quick! The children are occupied hunting for worms! Read another page while reminding them (frequently) to be gentle.)

There were so many directions the story could have gone in after the seeds of doubt are sown over Julie's identity, and I'm sure Amy Gentry could have made any of them into a gripping story, but I loved the backwards-chaining narrative she uses. (In terms of narrative structure, this reminded me of 'Memento' but with a female protagonist and a wider supporting cast.)

As we witness Julie settling back into life with the Whitakers, we begin to learn about Gretchen's life...and Violet's...and Mercy's... These girls all have sad stories which are beautifully told; Gentry's style varies from the understated to the poetic as the mundanity of these girls' uncomfortable lives veers into significant moments, pivotal for their survival.

What's to like?

I loved the narrative structure, the story arc, the characterisation and the writing. So, everything, really.

Anna's emotional unavailability is sufficiently well-established by her early spending splurge (what do you do when your 13 year old daughter re-emerges aged 21 after a traumatic 8 years absence during which she experienced multiple forms of abuse? Take her shopping, of course,) that her refusal to discuss the missing years seemed perfectly in keeping with her "hands-off" parenting style, though just occasionally I did want to scream "JUST TALK TO YOUR DAUGHTERS!" at her.

Further thoughts

The mother in me squirms a little when considering Anna's parenting. Could she have prevented Julie's disappearance? Was her emotional distance from her daughters part of the problem? Is Gentry placing part of the blame for Julie's kidnapping on a certain style of mothering or simply exploring the pressures society places on all women?

It's no surprise to learn that Gentry has done a lot of research and spent a lot of time supporting women who have been abused. There's a raw honesty to her writing that makes each story she recounts compelling. I'm lucky enough not to have experienced any of the situations she writes about, but the unemotional brutality of them feels right.

Final thoughts

This is a perfect suspense novel; suspend your disbelief (why on earth didn't the police investigate a certain key avenue? If they had done so then, well, there would be no story, but it stretches belief that they didn't try at all) and this is a gripping, dark tale of childhood destroyed, sexuality abused and a mother's reluctant journey to find out the truth about her daughter's disappearance.

Stunning. I highly recommend this. show less

This novel.... where do I begin? The story mainly focuses on Anna and "Julie"; the rest of the family are still present but they take a backseat here. While there are quite a few people who have complained about that, I actually quite liked that there was a limit to how many characters I was required to focus on, especially as the story became more convoluted. And I mean convoluted in a good way... if that even makes sense. The story switches between Anna, who is going through the present-day events, and "Julie" with her many different personas, who is recounting all of the things that have happened to her in the past 8 years that she has been missing. At times, trying to keep the story straight can be a challenge, but it was still show more executed so well and kept me engrossed. As I kept reading, I was overwhelmed by all of the emotions. The pain that every family member felt was so strong, and I could sense it in every word, and action. Every family member may not have been represented as much in the story, but their emotions were aptly shown. Just reading about the experiences that "Julie" has gone through was heart-breaking, and I almost cried. Not only did this story deliver in the amount of unexpected twists, it also sent me on an emotional rollercoaster. At the end of the novel, I was exhausted by the journey... and was astounded by the quality of the work and the caliber of this author. All in all, this was a great novel that tugs at your heart while also playing on your sense of paranoia, as you try to piece together the truth behind Julie's identity. show less

This novel.... where do I begin? The story mainly focuses on Anna and "Julie"; the rest of the family are still present but they take a backseat here. While there are quite a few people who have complained about that, I actually quite liked that there was a limit to how many characters I was required to focus on, especially as the story became more convoluted. And I mean convoluted in a good way... if that even makes sense. The story switches between Anna, who is going through the present-day events, and "Julie" with her many different personas, who is recounting all of the things that have happened to her in the past 8 years that she has been missing. At times, trying to keep the story straight can be a challenge, but it was still show more executed so well and kept me engrossed. As I kept reading, I was overwhelmed by all of the emotions. The pain that every family member felt was so strong, and I could sense it in every word, and action. Every family member may not have been represented as much in the story, but their emotions were aptly shown. Just reading about the experiences that "Julie" has gone through was heart-breaking, and I almost cried. Not only did this story deliver in the amount of unexpected twists, it also sent me on an emotional rollercoaster. At the end of the novel, I was exhausted by the journey... and was astounded by the quality of the work and the caliber of this author. All in all, this was a great novel that tugs at your heart while also playing on your sense of paranoia, as you try to piece together the truth behind Julie's identity. show less

TEXAS MYSTERY / SUSPENSE
Amy Gentry
Good as Gone: A Novel of Suspense
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover, 978-0-544-92095-8 (also available as an ebook, an audio book, and on Audible), 288 pgs., $23.00
July 26, 2016

Anna, Tom, and Jane are sitting down to dinner one night when the doorbell rings. Anna answers the door. “The first thing I see is her pale hair,” thinks Anna, “then her face … there’s something familiar about her.” Julie Whitaker has been gone for eight years, kidnapped from her bedroom at thirteen, “and just like that, the worst unhappens. Julie is home.” As the family tries to move forward, treading lightly, fault lines are exposed. When Anna gets a phone call from a private detective, he adds fuel to her show more dawning suspicions, and she begins to question this Julie’s identity. Is she or isn’t she?

Beginning with the exquisite tension of the prologue, Good as Gone, Austinite Amy Gentry’s debut novel, is by turns gripping, insightful, brutal, depressing, and hopeful. Gentry, a veteran of volunteer work helping victims of domestic and sexual violence, dives deep into murky psychological territory and sets up camp, empathically conveying the particular and disparate mindsets of small children, teenage girls, and grown women alike. Gentry’s portrait of contemporary American girlhood — attempting to grow up in a culture that pounds them about the head and shoulders with the message that their bodies are commodities (but don’t you dare presume the power to use it as such—this is reserved for men) — is devastating.

Anna, mother, wife, and university professor, is the practical one, the analytical one, the one who must believe, for her own sanity, that Julie is dead. Tom, father, husband, accountant, is the emotional one, the one who quits his job to devote his time to search efforts: collecting and administering donated funds for such things as reward money and billboards, creating Facebook pages and attending support groups. Jane, sister and troubled college freshman, was ten years old when Julie was taken, and the only witness. Gentry does a fine job of rendering the complicated relationship between Anna and Jane, who feels she’s been grievously neglected.

The fast-paced plot is carefully crafted, casually dropped hints are perfectly placed, details matter. Alternating narratives and shifting points of view demand close attention. The many startling plot twists are worthy of Gone Girl (with shades of Elizabeth Smart), the kind that confuse your brain as it struggles with learned cultural stereotypes that preclude possibilities, and then requires you to consider those possibilities. Gentry’s ingenious technique of working backward from the present, all the way back to before the beginning, to reveal how Julie became who she is now is particularly compelling.

In the end, Good as Gone is part thriller, part social critique, and wholly satisfying. I read Good as Gone in a single sitting because it wasn’t possible to not.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life. show less

Anna and Tom Whitaker's lives are irrevocably changed the night their thirteen-year-old daughter, Julie, disappears. The only witness to her kidnapping is her ten-year-old sister, Jane, who watches petrified from her closest as a man takes away her sister. The broken parents remain in their home, hoping against hope that someday their daughter will return. And then, amazingly, one night the doorbell rings and there she is: Julie. Now a young woman, with a harrowing tale to tell of abuse and horror, but otherwise unscathed. And just like that, the broken family is whole. But is it? Anna doesn't understand what her daughter is keeping from her, where she disappears when the family thinks she's at therapy. And when a Private Investigator show more shows up--a former detective who was involved in the early portions of Julie's case, with thoughts that Julie isn't really Julie--Anna is even more confused. She just wants her daughter back, but does she really have her?

This novel hooked me from the beginning, and I tore through it less than two days. It starts out with Julie (or the imposter, but I will say Julie for the sake of this review) arriving home and then we hear from Anna and some of the other characters as the family adjusts to Julie's homecoming. But we also delve into the past, which adds this amazing layer of suspense and intrigue and leaves you slightly befuddled, completely invested, and flipping pages like mad. When the point of view first switched from Anna to Julie early in the novel, I gasped a bit.

Gentry has created a book that is compulsively readable from a thriller standpoint, but also features emotionally damaged characters, struggling to survive after losing Julie for so many years. What I enjoyed so much about this book is that it's not only an excellent thriller, which keeps you guessing and wondering, but a nuanced portrait of a truly fractured family, who is still reeling from Julie's kidnapping. The interactions between Anna and her family is fascinating in itself -- Jane, for instance, has had her entire life basically formed around the disappearance of her sister. You don't always get explicit descriptions of their reactions, but you see it in every interaction and emotional attachment (or lack thereof) the family displays.

Overall, this is a great thriller: a fast-paced read, with a plot that will have you guessing (and gasping) and turning pages long into the night.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Edelweiss (thank you!); it is available everywhere as of 7/26.

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When Julie Whitaker, kidnapped from her home when she was only thirteen years old, seemingly returns to her family, it seems her parents and sister can finally begin to heal. But then a private detective begins to feed the flames of doubt Julie's mother, Anna, has already been feeling. If this woman isn't her daughter, who is she? And why would she be pretending to be Julie?

Gentry has created a very suspenseful story. From the first chapter, when readers witness Julie's kidnapping through the eyes of her younger sister, Jane, we are given a look into a tale both tragic and twisted. While one aspect of the story moves forward, the other moves back in time, multiple perspectives upping the mystery.

The one downside of these clever writing show more choices is that the book can occasionally get confusing. I had a hard time sometimes keeping track of what was happening and to whom. But I think this confusion was purposeful, and makes sense given what readers later learn about the characters and their lives up to that point.

This is the second book in a row I have read dealing with child abduction, and one among many out there that have offered a fictionalized take on an all-too-real subject. But Gentry has created a unique story that will keep you guessing and have you unable to stop turning pages. show less