The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewel

Summer 2017

Teenage mum Tallulah heads out on a date, leaving her baby son at home with her mother, Kim. At 4:30 a.m., 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 wood nearby called Dark Place.

Tallulah never returns.

Summer 2018

Walking in the woods behind the school where her boyfriend has just started teaching, Sophie sees a sign nailed to a fence. A sign that says:

DIG HERE...

A while ago I did a story on my Instagram warning my followers of Lisa Jewel as an author; I'd fallen in love with the first book I'd read by her - The Night She Disappeared - and immediately got more of her work because I was very impressed by her writing in this one. Unfortunately the other three books I read by her were dragged out, tedious and bored me to tears... *cough* The Girls *cough*

I felt like I wanted to re-read this book to refresh myself on this masterful tale and review it as one of the books that completely threw me for a loop and brought me to the best kind of tears.

The Main Plot: (Warning - Spoilers ahead!)

One night in the Summer of 2017, 19 year-old Tallulah leaves her one year-old son, Noah, with her mum, Kim, for the night. She goes out on a date with her boyfriend, Zach (also 19) and doesn't return. Kim wakes the next morning and searches for her daughter, feeling it wrong she didn't come home in the night. She finds out from gossip around the town that Tallulah and Zach went to a pool party in a residence that's also basically an antique mansion, lived in by a girl who goes to the same college as Tallulah. Kim speaks to this girl, Scarlett, who doesn't appear to know anything about where Tallulah and Zach went at the end of the night - just that Tallulah got sick and Zack called them a cab to go home. Obviously this is very worrying for Kim, so she calls all the local cab companies and as it turns out, none of them received a call for a pickup in that area the night before. Kim knows Tallulah would never leave her son, Noah, and has a terrible feeling in her gut.

So where did they go?

What happened to them?

Why does nobody know anything?

How did nobody see them after they left?

The next chapter jumps into the Summer of 2018, over a year since Tallulah and Zach went missing. Shaun Gray has just landed a job at Maypole House - the college campus that Tallulah once attended - and with him comes Sophie, a published mystery writer. She goes for a walk on the college grounds where she and Shaun have just moved in to when she finds a sign at the bottom of her garden; a piece of cardboard nailed to her fence with black marker on it, 'DIG HERE' with an arrow pointing into the soil. Sophie digs and finds a ring box. Inside, a diamond engagement ring. She discovers it once belonged to Zach, who went missing with his girlfriend the year before. Sophie uses her experience as a mystery writer to form connections and figure out what happened to the young couple last year, but she needs to be careful as she's a lot closer to the answer than she knows.

As more evidence is uncovered and more sleuthing is done, Sophie and Kim find there's much more to Tallulah's disappearance than originally theorised - perhaps her relationship was not as sparkly and wonderful as Kim thought it to be...

The Pros and Cons

➕ The character of Tallulah is very well-written; she feels like any other teenage mum you may know. Struggling with being a new mother, she gives herself, mind body and soul to this dependant little person of hers, and balances a borderline abusive boyfriend who once abandoned her when she was pregnant and who only came back once Noah was three months old. A lot of Tallulah's problems feel like every teenage girl's problems; feeling as if her life is collapsing on top of her sometimes and wondering if she can find a space in which to just breathe. 

➕ The chapters switching between 2017 and 2018 was very entertaining; having one part of the disappearance investigated alongside the disappearance actually happening in slow motion was so intense at times and gave the reader clues as well as not giving too much of the mystery away! It was a fine balance that Lisa Jewel manage to strike beautifully. 

➖ SPOILER ALERT... There was a bit at the end I didn't think felt as realistic as the rest of the book; when we find Tallulah has been kept alive by Scarlett and her mother and kept in a sleep with a plethora of drugs, I just felt that if Scarlett's mother really didn't want any evidence tying her to that night and what happened, she would have gotten rid of Tallulah a lot sooner. I don't feel she would have kept Tallulah alive just for Scarlett; she didn't seem to love Scarlett like a mother should love their daughter anyhow. But that's maybe my personal take.

➕ Kim's plight to find her daughter was not lost on me; so much of the book had the exciting perspective of Sophie helping to solve the mystery, or the terrifying perspective of Tallulah being threatened, stalked and backed into a corner, but my favourite was Kim. Her fear, her confusion and her daily fight with the mental toll of losing her daughter was felt on every page that her voice was written on. I felt it, raw and red, and her voice was the one that brought me to tears. Brav-o!

I'm going to give Lisa Jewel a 5/5 for this one!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book is my only favourite out of the four books I've read by Lisa, and I don't know why there's such a huge difference in the quality of writing or storyline, either way this book is a must read in my opinion. You'll never be able to guess the ending; this tale is promised to keep you on your toes!

It feels great to be back and reviewing once again! It's been a minute; I went to work over the lead up to Christmas and then I did some moving around the country (as usual!) and now I'm back to being a digital nomad - travelling around and documenting my journey while reading and reviewing as I go.

Let me know if you've read The Night She Disappeared and what you thought of it! Haven't read it yet? See the LinkTree in my Instagram\Facebook bio to order it online in time for the weekend - in the meantime, come join me on Instagram @south_african_hippie for extra content!

Love and Light,

Melissa x