Gone

A Gripping Psychological Thriller

By: S. H. Love

Narrated by: Gary Anderson

What would you do if you woke up and found your spouse missing?

When Rory Richards wakes up from a failed suicide attempt, he learns that his wife, Maggie, has vanished without a trace. All Rory can remember about the previous night is that the two had the fight of a lifetime.

The dispute causes him to storm out of the house and steal prescription pills from his neighbors in an attempt to overdose. After that, everything is a blur.

Now, he must retrace his steps to find out what happened to her.

Was she kidnapped?

Did she disappear on purpose?

What happened to Maggie?

Gone is a gripping psychological thriller that is filled with suspense.

Recommended if you like Gillian Flynn, Mary Kubica, J.D. Barker, and Paula Hawkins.

©2020 S.H. Love (P)2021 S.H. Love

Selfishness for the Win!

Rory Richards is front and center for this entire book. Waking up from his most recent suicide attempt, he’s a bit confused in the hospital and his day only gets worse from there… or does it? The police are there to ask him about his missing wife, Maggie Richards. Rory and Maggie haven’t been getting along for some time and Rory goes into a long whine about all the reasons that is. His whine lasts the entire book, so best to embrace it early so you can focus on the plot.

The story has a small cast, inept cops, and gullible ladies. There’s not many choices for who could be behind the missing wife. So far, there’s no evidence of injury or death, so Maggie is just missing at this point. I personally never got attached to any of the characters and I really didn’t like Rory (though I don’t think you’re expected to like him). The ladies were shallow; the cops were less than thorough in their investigation. I found myself rooting for Maggie, hoping she had escaped her empty marriage for a lovely beach and a good book.

The story was a bit slow for me because I wasn’t attached to any of the characters. Rory isn’t clever or interesting. He is very selfish and everything is about him…. which wouldn’t be so bad if he was interesting. Maggie’s best friend, Anna, is definitely wanting to comfort Rory. There’s a nosey neighbor (Shelley? Shelby?). There’s also a newsreporter who admittedly just might have the most smarts of all the characters. Then there’s a possible sighting of Maggie in another city and Rory decides he has to go check it out… and there he falls in with yet another gullible woman, Melissa. Sigh….

The story gets a little drama towards the end. However, I was left feeling a bit unsatisfied because of how slow the story was and that I didn’t really care about any of the characters. 3.5/5 stars.

The Narration: Gary Anderson had a good voice for Rory but he didn’t have much range of voices for the cast. All the ladies sounded the same, but that wasn’t really a problem because rarely was there more than one woman in any particular scene. There was a little variation in the male voices. Rory often responds with a snarky comment in his own thoughts but says something much more acceptable out loud. However, because of the way Rory was narrated, it’s sometimes very hard to pick up on that. With other books, an author would use sotto voce for the snarky thought but here, there’s usually no differentiation between thought and spoken line. I did hear one sentence where the first half was repeated; other than that, there were no tech issues with the recording. 3.5/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by S.H. Love. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.