Sarah Meuleman | FIND ME GONE

Plot (via Goodreads):

1996. In the sleepy hamlet of Bachte-Maria-Leerne, in the Belgian countryside, the residents are reeling from the disappearance of several young girls. The country is thrown into a state of emergency and even after the killer is apprehended, not all the girls missing are found alive, causing further alarm and political protests in the form of White Marches.

At the local school, St. Martin’s High, the devastating news is met more with morbid fascination than fear among its students—except for twelve-year-old Sophie. Unlike her peers, Sophie knows what it’s like to be afraid and never truly feel safe. The only time she feels a sense of security and belonging is when she’s with her best friend Hannah… if only she could confide her darkest secrets to the girl she admires… the girl whose home life is so very different from Sophie’s… the girl whom Sophie wishes she could be more like.  

When Hannah begins hanging out at a popular teenage club “The Sloop” and starts dating the charming and clever Damian, Sophie suddenly feels left out. With each day, Sophie notices Hannah drifting farther from her. Before the friends can reconcile, the village is thrown into fresh panic when Sophie fails to return home after a high school dance—and is never seen again.

2014. Hannah is living the life most young women dream of as a successful columnist for a fashion magazine in New York City. But after years of being the party reporter, documenting the revelries of the rich and famous, she craves a deeper subject for her writing. Quitting her job and leaving her former glitzy Manhattan lifestyle for a run-down apartment in Brooklyn, she spends her days writing a biography of three famous authors: Agatha Christie, Barbara Follett, and Virginia Woolf—three women who struggled with family, loyalty, and ambition… three women who one day disappeared without a trace.

As Hannah delves into her research and the lives of these luminaries, she’s forced to confront questions she’s tried so hard to repress. What happened to Sophie that night? How does a person just go missing, never to be heard from again? Taking readers on an exhilarating journey from the Flemish countryside to New York, Find Me Gone is equal parts thriller and tender coming-of-age story that will leave readers wondering until the final page…

What happened to Sophie?

Review: 

I have a confession to make. We all have our reading quirks and one of mine is strictly this - I admit that I would much rather read a novel that features different character perspectives and timelines throughout alternate chapters than ones that done. There; I said it. Moving on...

It's no surprise that when I read the plot to FIND ME GONE by Sarah Meuleman that it seemed right up my alley. Cue to me coming down with a nasty cold due to the rather strange weather we've been having in Upstate New York. What began as a half day at work turned into a rather interesting experience in reading this novel. I took a half day to catch up on rest, relax, and get over whatever nasty bug was crawling through my entire system. I picked up this novel and would read, sleep, read, sleep, read, sleep, etc. throughout the rest of my day. As the novel kept going, I was really digging it. It features this unapologetic "cool girl" who makes a really interesting and daring life change and I was just going with it. Then I kind of got wrapped up in the storyline between said "cool girl" and her bestie as they grew up in Belgium. So wait, something bad happened to "cool girl" in Belgium and now she's in New York City with an amazing job that she just quit to be a writer...and she wants to write about famous women who have gone missing? Okay, now I am going from really intrigued to a little obsessed. I tried to tone it down, but picking this one up in between slumbers was a good choice if you ask me. 

I honestly will say I really liked the adolescent timeline of 1996 in Belgium the most. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the present time chapters, but these were just a little darker psychologically and foreshadowing that something terrible happened and that's what made Hannah such a complex and interesting women to read about as an adult. Hannah was one of the most enjoyable characters to read. She is feisty, bewildering, and intelligent. It's a dangerous combination for someone who is slowly becoming mentally unhinged. I loved the alternating chapters seeing her as an adolescent and a grown woman. And the chapters that featured her friendship with Sophie were so immersive and while I enjoyed the rest of the story, I'll admit I was looking forward to those chapters the most. 

My only fallback with this novel were the other chapters...the "missing chapters" I should say. These are the chapters that feature Agatha Christie, Barbara Follett, and Virginia Woolf. Were they well written? Absolutely. I get that Hannah is writing a book about these three women and I honestly understood her fascination with the topic, I just felt as a reader, these chapters of the women when they went missing were distracting and not necessary. They kind of lured me away from the real reason I picked up this book. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Hannah in present day and I wanted to know what happened years ago in Belgium. I think these chapters could have either been shortened or just mentioned in the present time chapters. Nevertheless, the ending to this one was shocking and satisfying - so although I didn't like that one part of this novel, I'm really glad I stuck it out until the ending. I got everything I wanted and needed with this ending. It was devastating, compulsive, and psychologically satisfying. 

Special thanks to Harper Collins for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 3.5/5