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"Thirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom in the middle of the night, witnessed only by her younger sister. Her family was shattered, but managed to stick together, hoping against hope that Julie is still alive. And then one night: the doorbell rings. A young woman who appears to be Julie is finally, miraculously, home safe. The family is ecstatic--but Anna, Julie's mother, has whispers of doubts. She hates to face them. She cannot avoid them. When she is contacted by a former detective turned private eye, she begins a torturous search for the truth about the woman she desperately hopes is her daughter. Propulsive and suspenseful, Good as Gone will appeal to fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, and keep readers guessing until the final pages"--… (more)
User reviews
This isn't a bad novel. It's
If you're looking for a seriously mysterious.....Well....Mystery, look no further.
This follows the story of a kidnapped girl named Julie and her sudden return to her grief-stricken family 8 years after the fact.
Soon things don't add up for her mother, Anna, who begins to dig deeper into her
Eight years ago, thirteen year old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom at her parent's home. Her younger sister Jane witnesseD the crime from her hiding
....until the day when a young woman knocks at the door. Could it really be Julie returned? Her parents are ecstatic - in the beginning. While Dad's faith that this is his daughter never wavers, Mom Anna has serious doubts. As does the reader.
Gentry plays with the reader, giving the returned Julie her own voice and flashback chapters that plant the same seeds of doubt in our minds. Julie/Not Julie's life is hard to read about. I did like the present to past timeline for Julie/Not Julie's chapters. As the book progresses we get closer to the night - and the reason Julie/Not Julie was taken. The emotional upheaval of the return, the guilt, the questions, family dynamics and the mother/daughter relationships are also viewed and explored through Jane and Anna's points of view.
I did find the police investigation into the return somewhat lacking. The night she returns, she is not even taken to a hospital. The question of whether it is Julie or not would seem to be easy to confirm with DNA. (Yes, that pragmatic nature of mine always asks these questions)
I think the 'novel of suspense' moniker on the cover, may be a bit ambitious. I liked the book, but didn't find it overly suspenseful. Instead I saw it as a page turner - bit of mystery and a journey to the final answer - it it Julie or isn't it?
I really liked how this book was set up, kept me guessing, going one way and then another. Suspenseful, realistic I thought with the involvement of social media. Things we see weekly on the news. The stress on the family, the somewhat neglected younger daughter and her bitterness, all rang true. Still, I could not understand why the police were not more involved, didn't try to get to the bottom of Julie's story, that struck me as unrealistic. Though it was suspenseful, I did want to know what was going on and the author did good job maneuvering the reader through the various threads. Will more than likely read this authors next book.
ARC from publisher.
It's the mother of a missing child's most cherished wish: the child, returned.
But what if you had doubts? What if your long-lost daughter wasn't being completely honest about the circumstances surrounding her abduction? What if you started to wonder if your daughter - your real daughter
Amy Gentry's astonishing debut explores exactly this scenario.
What's it about?
Eight years ago beautiful, innocent Julie Whitaker was kidnapped in the middle of the night from her own bedroom.
Since then, her family have barely survived, hoping for her return while knowing it's nearly impossible.
And then the nearly impossible happens: Julie is home. Or is she? And what did happen to her while she was gone?
What's it like?
Suspenseful. Chilling. Cleverly constructed.
I loved this book and read it in a couple of days, sneaking pages into the smallest crevices of my days (Quick! The children are occupied hunting for worms! Read another page while reminding them (frequently) to be gentle.)
There were so many directions the story could have gone in after the seeds of doubt are sown over Julie's identity, and I'm sure Amy Gentry could have made any of them into a gripping story, but I loved the backwards-chaining narrative she uses. (In terms of narrative structure, this reminded me of 'Memento' but with a female protagonist and a wider supporting cast.)
As we witness Julie settling back into life with the Whitakers, we begin to learn about Gretchen's life...and Violet's...and Mercy's... These girls all have sad stories which are beautifully told; Gentry's style varies from the understated to the poetic as the mundanity of these girls' uncomfortable lives veers into significant moments, pivotal for their survival.
What's to like?
I loved the narrative structure, the story arc, the characterisation and the writing. So, everything, really.
Anna's emotional unavailability is sufficiently well-established by her early spending splurge (what do you do when your 13 year old daughter re-emerges aged 21 after a traumatic 8 years absence during which she experienced multiple forms of abuse? Take her shopping, of course,) that her refusal to discuss the missing years seemed perfectly in keeping with her "hands-off" parenting style, though just occasionally I did want to scream "JUST TALK TO YOUR DAUGHTERS!" at her.
Further thoughts
The mother in me squirms a little when considering Anna's parenting. Could she have prevented Julie's disappearance? Was her emotional distance from her daughters part of the problem? Is Gentry placing part of the blame for Julie's kidnapping on a certain style of mothering or simply exploring the pressures society places on all women?
It's no surprise to learn that Gentry has done a lot of research and spent a lot of time supporting women who have been abused. There's a raw honesty to her writing that makes each story she recounts compelling. I'm lucky enough not to have experienced any of the situations she writes about, but the unemotional brutality of them feels right.
Final thoughts
This is a perfect suspense novel; suspend your disbelief (why on earth didn't the police investigate a certain key avenue? If they had done so then, well, there would be no story, but it stretches belief that they didn't try at all) and this is a gripping, dark tale of childhood destroyed, sexuality abused and a mother's reluctant journey to find out the truth about her daughter's disappearance.
Stunning. I highly recommend this.
Amy Gentry
Good as Gone: A Novel of Suspense
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover, 978-0-544-92095-8 (also available as an ebook, an audio book, and on Audible), 288 pgs., $23.00
July 26, 2016
Anna, Tom, and Jane are sitting down to dinner one night when the doorbell rings. Anna
Beginning with the exquisite tension of the prologue, Good as Gone, Austinite Amy Gentry’s debut novel, is by turns gripping, insightful, brutal, depressing, and hopeful. Gentry, a veteran of volunteer work helping victims of domestic and sexual violence, dives deep into murky psychological territory and sets up camp, empathically conveying the particular and disparate mindsets of small children, teenage girls, and grown women alike. Gentry’s portrait of contemporary American girlhood — attempting to grow up in a culture that pounds them about the head and shoulders with the message that their bodies are commodities (but don’t you dare presume the power to use it as such—this is reserved for men) — is devastating.
Anna, mother, wife, and university professor, is the practical one, the analytical one, the one who must believe, for her own sanity, that Julie is dead. Tom, father, husband, accountant, is the emotional one, the one who quits his job to devote his time to search efforts: collecting and administering donated funds for such things as reward money and billboards, creating Facebook pages and attending support groups. Jane, sister and troubled college freshman, was ten years old when Julie was taken, and the only witness. Gentry does a fine job of rendering the complicated relationship between Anna and Jane, who feels she’s been grievously neglected.
The fast-paced plot is carefully crafted, casually dropped hints are perfectly placed, details matter. Alternating narratives and shifting points of view demand close attention. The many startling plot twists are worthy of Gone Girl (with shades of Elizabeth Smart), the kind that confuse your brain as it struggles with learned cultural stereotypes that preclude possibilities, and then requires you to consider those possibilities. Gentry’s ingenious technique of working backward from the present, all the way back to before the beginning, to reveal how Julie became who she is now is particularly compelling.
In the end, Good as Gone is part thriller, part social critique, and wholly satisfying. I read Good as Gone in a single sitting because it wasn’t possible to not.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
This novel is deeply consuming and thought provoking.
At the age of thirteen, Julie is kidnapped, while her sister, Jane watches from her hiding place. Her parents, Tom and Anna, struggle for years, caught in the limbo
But, when Julie suddenly reappears, the apparent victim of sexual abuse a trafficking, the family is once more thrown into an unusual tailspin as hope once more contrast with disturbing information about Julie’s sudden return and the truth of how and why she was kidnapped.
For Anna, the only way to reestablish a relationship with Julie and hopefully heal the rift with Jane someday, will be to uncover the grim truth, not matter what that might be.
Once again, we have the ‘Gone Girl/Girl on a Train’ comparison from the publisher, and once again, I’m going to tell you to blow that off.
This is a solid and compelling psychological thriller, very moody and atmospheric, and emotional. I was impressed by some of the unique tactics the author used to weave the complex tale of Julie’s past together, but the switches in time and directions occasionally jarred. I also guessed some of the plot twists before they were revealed, but could not have worked out all the details and so it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book.
This is an effective and compelling read, and is a notable debut. I will definitely read more books by this author.
3.5 stars
Gentry has created a very suspenseful story. From the first chapter, when readers witness Julie's kidnapping through the eyes of her younger sister, Jane, we are given a look into a tale both tragic and twisted. While one aspect of the story moves forward, the other moves back in time, multiple perspectives upping the mystery.
The one downside of these clever writing choices is that the book can occasionally get confusing. I had a hard time sometimes keeping track of what was happening and to whom. But I think this confusion was purposeful, and makes sense given what readers later learn about the characters and their lives up to that point.
This is the second book in a row I have read dealing with child abduction, and one among many out there that have offered a fictionalized take on an all-too-real subject. But Gentry has created a unique story that will keep you guessing and have you unable to stop turning pages.
I enjoyed this book; when I wasn't reading it I wished I was. However, the book fell short in the actual plot and events. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives from both Anna and Julie, however, I also felt as if they were unnecessary to unraveling the story until
I think it is unfair to say that this novel was not suspenseful. For one thing, I really had no idea how it was going to end, which is great because after you read enough thrillers you tend to pick up on small details that give away the ending. Also, I definitely had to know what was going to happen next, it wasn't that heart accelerating oh my gosh what is going on type of suspense, which is what I both expected and would have preferred. All in all, I would still recommend this book to fans of mystery/thriller/suspense novels, however it probably won't be the best thriller you read all year.
It’s established right away that Julie may or may not actually be who she says she is. We see these mysterious deceptions through the eyes of Anna, the mother, and through ‘Julie’ herself. I kind of liked that the mystery itself wasn’t based on whether Julie was actually Julie, and that the mystery was whether or not Anna was going to figure it all out. And really, this book is more about the tragedy and trauma that a family has to endure when one of their children disappears, and how everyone copes should they suddenly come back. I think that a lot of the time we only hear about the family being reunited, but rarely do we hear about how hard it can be for everyone to readjust when so much has changed. “Room” certainly takes that theme on, and honestly, “Room” does it better. While it’s good that Gentry did make it clear that the damage is far reaching in this family, and that a potential reappearance isn’t going to just fix everything, I think that the problem for me is that, outside of younger sister Jane, I didn’t really connect to any of the characters in this book. Anna, while I have no doubt her actions are in step with how a person would react in her situation, was so cold and cruel to Jane and sometimes Tom, her husband, I just couldn’t quite get behind her completely. While I don’t doubt that the emotional trauma of losing a child is going to make anyone act in ways that aren’t always healthy, Anna didn’t grab at my sympathy heartstrings so much as put me completely off.
‘Julie”s sections were interesting, going backwards from her ending up on the family doorstep and marching back through time, showing how she got there and the experiences she had to go through. While I know this was done to humanize her and to better understand her psyche, I found myself tempted to skim through these parts. It was a neat way to explain who she was, I will fully admit that, but since she herself didn’t do much for me I wasn’t as invested as others may be. We’re meant to have a lot of mixed feelings about her, and unfortunately it was hard to recover from deep suspicion. And like Anna, I just didn’t quite feel myself attaching to her as a character, even when I saw her going through really horrible and terrible things. Ultimately, it didn’t matter to me if she was who she said she was. The moments I liked best were between her and Jane, the younger sister who always blamed herself for letting a man walk out the door with her older sister as she hid in the closet. Jane was by far the character who intrigued me most, as she has basically been emotionally neglected by her parents because she’s the child who was left behind. Her own guilt festers and manifests in self imposed isolation, and her mother’s veiled resentment throws a wall between them that neither really can push through. It really did make me think about what it must be like for the kids who are left behind in stories like this, and how they handle it.I think that had this book had some perspective chapters from Jane I probably would have enjoyed it quite a bit more.
And on top of everything, the ending (which I’ll leave a mystery for everyone so as not to spoil anything) felt so haphazardly thrown together, with a number of things tied up neatly in a number of bows, that I had a hard time swallowing it. Some things were just too conveniently explained away, and other things were not really addressed as much as I wanted them to be.
“Good As Gone” has all the elements that it needs to make a great book, but the execution left a little to be desired for me. So instead of a great read, it was a fine one. I think that it’s worth your time if you like this genre, but it may leave readers as satisfied as they wish to be.
Told through several voices, this story examines what happens to a young mind when it is manipulated. Is it really Julie, or someone claiming to be Julie?
Quite sad. However, I think the book was a bit confusing, and I didn’t like the Charlie/John David storyline at all.
It is 8 years later
I wasn't really interested in whether this was Julie or not. I felt no compulsion with the characters.