After years of hard-boiled resistance I bought a Kindle this week. It’s not that I’ll favour the device over paper but it’s about convenience. There are so many deals on Kindle and it’s such an ease whilst travelling.

John Marrs’s When You  Disappeared is the first book I’ve read on my Kindle. I’ve read John Marrs before(The One), and interestingly felt exactly the same about these two books. They start  very promising, the first two thirds of the book is gripping and intriguing but the story makes too many unconvincing turns and takes in too much coincidence. The character building in ‘The One’ was a bit better then this one. I wish the plot was simpler.

Catherine and Simon are happily married with 3 beautiful children. But one day Catherine wakes up to find Simon gone. She thinks he’s gone for a run, but he doesn’t show up. There is nothing left behind, no goodbye note, no trace. Simon vanishes into thin air. Then the story moves forward to 25 years later and Simon comes back to face with Catherine – Kitty, as he calls her. As the novel moves back and forth between years the truth about why and how folds out.

I couldn’t stop reading in the first half of the book- I was hooked into the story, and dying to find out why Simon left his family. These kind of page-turner books are like running towards a distant village. The promised mystery looks terrific from a distance. Then as you progress towards the end, if the ending or the story is not really what you expected, you start to see that the village houses are not that colourful, the walls have cracks, streets are muddy…I felt a bit like that when I figured out the ending. I  think the idea is very good, but there are too many coincidences and illogical elements in the story. I don’t want to spoil things for you but, the communication between a husband and wife, whom were childhood sweethearts and married for years  can’t be that bad… Also how can a family man adopt to a nomadic life with so much ease. There are other things I can list but that will be revealing too much about the story!

Not a bad read, but too many things going on in the story.  I think John Marrs is a good writer. But this book has almost every sort of domestic drama in it, too much violence, too much obsession.  I’d have enjoyed it more with a simpler story line.

Also please note that this book have been published in the US with a different name: Wronged Sons.

This book has:

GoodReads: 4.5

Amazon: 4.5

Audible: 4.4

scores by the time this review is written.

If you liked this book, you might like The One by John Marrs, The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena