Book Review : 'Since She Went Away' by David Bell

My Rating

Book Name : Since She Went Away
Author : David Bell
Genre : Suspense Thriller

Blurb : Three months earlier, Jenna Barton was supposed to meet her lifelong best friend Celia. But when Jenna arrived late, she found that Celia had disappeared—and hasn’t been seen again. Jenna has blamed herself for her friend’s disappearance every single day since then.
The only piece of evidence is a lone diamond earring found where Celia and Jenna were planning to meet, leading the national media to dub Celia “The Diamond Mom.” And even though Jenna has obsessively surfed message boards devoted to missing persons cases, she is no closer to finding any answers—or easing her guilt.
But when her son’s new girlfriend—who suddenly arrived in town without a past—disappears, a stricken Jenna begins to unwind the tangled truth behind Celia’s tragedy. And as long-buried secrets finally come to light, she discovers how completely lives can be shattered by a few simple lies.

Book from my eyes : Often our lives turn upside down with very small and apparently unpredictable steps we take. So does happen to Jenna Barton, a nurse in a small town of Kentucky. One fine day she makes a place to relive her childhood memories by meeting her lifelong best friend, Celia at a wee hour of the night. But when she reaches their usual meeting place, she finds Celia has been kidnapped leaving behind an earring as the only evidence of her being there. Worried, lost, guilty Jenna takes it completely as her responsibility of Celia's kidnap. If she would have been there a couple of minutes earlier, she wouldn't have to lose her friend to the night. Since the night, her only priority becomes finding her best friend Celia, which led her to became the puppet of media, upbringing her son in a house where visits and interrogation by cops became a regular affair. But still nothing changed, no one could find any trace of Celia. As the novel progresses, slowly knots of Celia's disappear starts to loose or may be more complecated. But finally, when the mystery resolves, no one, could have even thought in a nightmare of that possibility.

Thumbs Up:

• This is a good suspense thriller read, with every new evidence, every new victim, I felt I am bit near to the revelation of criminal but most of them were just a hallucination created by David Bell and I fall for that. I just loved how the author convincingly made me fall in the trap he created and proved me wrong. That's the best way of writing a suspense story.
• The flow of the story was very crisp and smooth, kept me on the hook every second of it and not even for a second I got bored. 
• The emotions of Jenna and his son Jade were captured too well that anyone could feel the same while reading the novel.

Thumbs Down :

• There are certain situations which were quite a bit of coincidence and seemed to be unreal, like
• Tabitha's father's arrival in the kitchen, Tabitha being in the kitchen, Detective Poole leaving the place unguarded and Jeena's online friend reaching there, all at the exact time and sequence how is needed is quite a bit of coincidence and truely unreal.
• Every important incident like Ursula plotting Jade in TV, Jenna hugging Celia's husband and Ursula seeing the same, Tabitha reaching Jenna's home, The online guy tracking Jenna and coming to meet her, Ursula disappearing from her home and finally the revelation of the mystery, everything happening within a couple of hours. These all also seemed a bit planned and unreal.  
• Certain things are given overly importance, which I doubt is really a big deal. One being Jeena's use of 'F' word in the national television.

Verdict : This book is a good read and will definitely keep you in suspense until the last moment until when it's beyond imagination who is the main culprit.