A great psychological thriller with a great writing style
'She's Not There' is the fictional account of a couple whose 2-year-old daughter goes missing from their hotel room one night, whilst the couple are eating at a restaurant with friends. First and foremost I am surprised that I picked up this book on that alone, as the plot has a lot of similarities to a well-known true story of a young girl that went missing from a Portuguese holiday resort. It sits uneasy with me that such a tragic (and real) story has been used as the fodder for a fictional novel, but that is my only gripe with this book.
Fielding's writing is absolutely genius. Throughout this book she seamlessly travels from accounts of the present day, to up to 15 years ago when the main protagonist's daughter goes missing. She takes us along the journey from discovering the child is gone, to the days and weeks that follow. To the breakup of her marriage, and her understandably never-ending desire to find her daughter. All this changes when 15 years after daughter Samantha's disappearance, mother Caroline receives a phone call from a stranger. Given that we are given this information from the book blurb alone, I'd say that the plot of the book pans out fairly predictably, and although I found the pace of the book to be fast and snappy, I was still desperate to get to the answers. When the answers finally came, a few facts were as I predicted, whilst others were a bit of a surprise.
Joy Fielding is hailed as the 'queen of psychological suspense', and although I would say this novel ticks those boxes, this one perhaps didn't offer enough suspense as I would have liked, given its predictability. That being said, I really enjoyed her writing style and so will be looking out for many more of her books.
Fielding's writing is absolutely genius. Throughout this book she seamlessly travels from accounts of the present day, to up to 15 years ago when the main protagonist's daughter goes missing. She takes us along the journey from discovering the child is gone, to the days and weeks that follow. To the breakup of her marriage, and her understandably never-ending desire to find her daughter. All this changes when 15 years after daughter Samantha's disappearance, mother Caroline receives a phone call from a stranger. Given that we are given this information from the book blurb alone, I'd say that the plot of the book pans out fairly predictably, and although I found the pace of the book to be fast and snappy, I was still desperate to get to the answers. When the answers finally came, a few facts were as I predicted, whilst others were a bit of a surprise.
Joy Fielding is hailed as the 'queen of psychological suspense', and although I would say this novel ticks those boxes, this one perhaps didn't offer enough suspense as I would have liked, given its predictability. That being said, I really enjoyed her writing style and so will be looking out for many more of her books.