Disappeared - Laura Jarratt

AUTHOR: Laura Jarratt

GENRE: Contemporary Drama

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: This surprised me. It’s a well-written and well-paced drama with many thoughtful lines, memorable characters and difficult situations. Worth reading when you are looking for a book to prickle your mind and tickle your heart.

Story:

Cerys has decided that she has had enough of her life. She drives away to a remote spot, sets her car afire, and waits on the hillside to die. But life has other plans for her and instead of meeting death, she ends up bumping into Lily and her four year old, who also seem to be escaping something. The two women form an immediate bond. But how far can a bond be strengthened if it is based on incomplete facts and constant threats from the past? Will the two ever be able to trust each other and leave their earlier lives behind? Read and find out.

The book is written in a third person narration mainly from the points of view of Cerys and Lily.

Where the book worked well for me:

✔ The highlight of the story has got to be the complex human emotions and interconnections it depicts. Not every relationship is what it appears to be. Not every person is what he/she are supposed to be. Sometimes, it is the person who is at fault, and sometimes our expectations of that person. The author throws light on all these aspects without being biased towards either gender. I especially appreciate her portrayal of Cerys. Even while providing a satisfactory ending to her story, it is not a typical ending.

✔ Another special aspect of the story is how it shows that family isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. Many a time, it is family who ends up damaging you and friends or strangers-turned-friends who prove themselves angels in disguise. This book highlights this fact very well.

✔ Though I wasn’t in the mood for an intense book, this story still ended up captivating me. The narrative moves ahead steadily, and at just the right pace to allow you to understand Cerys and Lily and their rationale for leaving their earlier lives behind.

✔ The story is set in Wales and it makes excellent use of the locale.

✔ Cerys and Lily are both complex characters and the author portrays them in a well-layered and realistic way, rather than painting them as 100% pure or good. They also act as per their age (53 and 22 respectively), which is even more satisfying to me after my earlier novel where a 50 year old behaved like a 20 year old. Some of the secondary characters are more unidimensional in comparison but most of them are also impactful.

✔ It took me a little while to get used to the writing style. There are very quick changes in perspective across Cerys and Lily and sometimes, other characters. This happens not with every new chapter but even within a chapter. Once I got attuned to this methodology, the shifts in viewpoints seemed to work perfectly for the story and I enjoyed the exercise. (My copy of the book wasn’t formatted properly, so things did get a little confusing at times. I am sure the final published version won’t have these issues.)

✔ The third person pov works excellently for the story. I applaud the author for not succumbing to the popular trend and having the narration in first person, or worse, having the two characters narrated in two different grammatical voices. This is a story that works well because of the third person pov.

✔ There are many beautiful and thoughtful lines throughout the story that just made me pause and ponder. One of my favourite ones was, “ Women shouldn't compete over their pain. It's enough that we hurt. ” If only everyone remembered this!

Where the book could have worked better for me:

❌ The prologue was really pointless. I hate it when a prologue is taken from a key scene towards the end just to create a kind of curiosity at the start. A prologue is meant to give a kind of background to the story, or maybe to establish why things are happening. When it just rehashes an action sequence up to a suspenseful point and then goes into the bland background story, it makes me feel as if it is catering to those readers who check out the first few pages of a book to decide whether to buy it or not.

❌ There are a lot of convenient coincidences towards the end. While they were handled well, they were still too serendipitous.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I had expected. I am glad I didn’t remember the fact that this is tagged as a complex thriller on GoodReads. While there are some thrilling bits towards the end, the book is primarily a contemporary drama. And if you go into it expecting a thriller, you are bound to be disappointed.

Definitely recommended to fans of well-written dramatic fiction with some thrilling scenes and some emotional moments.

My thanks to Orion Publishing Group and NetGalley for the DRC of “Disappeared”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.