Then She Was Gone

How it reads

Then She Was Gone is thriller (domestic thriller, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in a suburban setting, in the recent past, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are family, loss and grief and secrets. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 426 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.