Before Your Absence

An Addictive Spanish Thriller

By: Lorena Franco

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is how absence begins:
"Amaia. Amaia, it's me, Mikel. Listen, I have to... I have to leave before they find me. I'm going to do something bad, really bad. Not even you can save me this time. Please, forgive me. Forgive me and don't come. Don't call the police. Don't trust anyone. And, above all, don't play their game. Don't play their..."

Anne was eighteen when she disappeared in the early hours of the night of San Juan in 2008, amidst fireworks, bonfires, music, and revelry, after a heated argument with her boyfriend Mikel. Ten years have passed, and Anne's disappearance remains a mystery. She never appeared. Neither alive nor dead. But now it is Mikel, tormented by the past, who disappears, leaving many questions unanswered. Before vanishing without a trace, Mikel left a disturbing message for his sister Amaia, who, two months later, leaves her life in Paris behind and returns to Coaña, Asturias.

Amaia must not only confront her own demons but also the darkness of others as she pieces together a puzzle filled with deaths, absences, and difficult-to-bear secrets while struggling not to succumb to the charm of first love.

HOW MANY HEARTBEATS DO WE LOSE THROUGHOUT LIFE?
HOW MANY LOSSES CAN WE ENDURE?

The new novel by Lorena Franco, a two-time finalist for the Amazon Storyteller Literary Prize and one of the best-selling authors on Amazon, reveals the opacity of life in small communities, the suffocation of family circles with their secrets and lies, and emotions that overflow and sweep everything away. These are some of the elements that permeate "Before Your Absence," an addictive psychological thriller set in Coaña, Asturias, passing through Paris and Madrid that goes beyond entertainment to shake us up with many other reasons for reflection.