Author: Mary Jennifer Payne
Publisher: Dundurn
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Since You've Been Gone isn't the wisest choice of title for a novel since it's so common. I counted twelve on BN, and the title doesn't really describe the novel very well. It's another first person PoV novel, which typically don't work for me, but in some cases the writer carries it and it does offer a rewarding read. In this case, I have to say that I became really intrigued by the very first sentence: "Today I punched Ranice James in the face." You can’t get a more alluring start to a novel than that! And by that I mean not to condone violence, but to point out that this sentence immediately forces questions into your brain: Who the heck is Ranice James? Why was this narrator punching her (or him)? And if this is all true, why is the narrator 'fessing up to us readers? And why am I asking you? (You can read that first chapter on the author's website - or could at the time of posting this review.
The problem was that it went downhill after that first sentence! We never did learn anything about Ranice James (not in the part of this novel which I read). The narrator clearly has anger management issues, but that's actually not the worst of her problems. She and mom are apparently on the run from a violent father and husband, and have a habit of changing address rather frequently. How they finance this is a mystery, particularly the last move, since it’s a huge change, all the way from Toronto to London. And it gets worse.
Edie's mom all-too-quickly finds work cleaning an office on the night shift, getting paid under the table, but then she vanishes without a trace - or almost without one. Instead of immediately going to the police, Edie decides to become a detective and partners up with the bad boy of the class. My stomach was turning at this point because of an overdose of cliché. The bad boy of the class, really? Why not take a few steps off the path most taken and have her partner with a geek or a goody-goody - just for a change? Why even assign her a male partner? Must every girl have a guy to validate her?
This - not the partnering up, but the failure to go to the police - was the first of many bad decisions Edie takes. I have no doubt that she will find her mom, but the story was so predictable at this point that it held no interest for me whatsoever, so I gave up on it and moved on - to something I hoped would be a lot more rewarding than this one promised to be.
