Book Review of ‘The Night She Disappeared’ by Lisa Jewell

“Mum, there’s some people here from college, they asked me back to theirs. Just for an hour or so. Is that OK?”

Midsummer 2017: teenage mum Tallulah heads out on a date, leaving her baby son at home with her mother, Kim.

At 11pm she sends her mum a text message. At 4.30am Kim awakens to discover that Tallulah has not come home

Friends tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a pool party at a house in the woods nearby called Dark Place

Tallulah never returns.

2018: walking in the woods behind the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started as a head-teacher, Sophie sees a sign nailed to a fence.

A sign that says: DIG HERE . . .

I love a Lisa Jewell thriller, and this much-anticipated latest novel is hotly-tipped to be a bestseller. In my opinion, it’s her best one yet!

There were a couple of things that hooked me in the from the start: the setting of a private boarding school; the characters of Tallulah, who is a teenage mum, and the new headmaster’s girlfriend Sophie, who is an author of detective novels. Add a mysterious disappearance into the mix and you’ve got ‘The Night She Disappeared’, a book that I really didn’t want to put down.

Lisa Jewell always has good characters and plots, but this one seemed so much sharper and ‘tighter’ somehow, that it really was a page-turner. There were no lose ends, and she keeps the twists coming right until the end. A big thumbs up from me!

Front book cover of ‘The Night She Disappeared’ by Lisa Jewell

‘The Night She Disappeared‘ is due to be published by Penguin on 22nd July 2021. I received an ARC of this novel is exchange for my honest review.

You can buy your own copy of ‘The Night She Disappeared’ here (and I’ll get a small commission, at no extra cost to yourself, if you purchase through my link ).