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lindsaynixon 's review for:
Since She's Been Gone
by Sagit Schwartz
2.5-2.75 stars.
The 'main story' about the missing mother captivated me and despite being turned off/annoyed by several other parts of the book (more below) I pushed on to find out if the mother was still alive and what exactly was going on there.
That said, the unrelenting discussions about ED's and the character's ED and history of it started to make me feel like I was going to end up with an ED. At first I appreciated that a character had an ED and that is was explained and portrayed properly. However, it is at least 35% of the book if not more. It never stops. It is another MC. While I understand that is the reality for someone living with an ED (it is literally a MC in their head/life) it was too much here. I have not had an ED but imagine this would be extremely triggering and again, may make an ED "contagious" to some readers. It was relentless and too much. The editor really needed to pair some of that down.
The other part of the story I had mixed feelings about is this is more or less Sackler family fiction. I loathe and hate the Sackler family and the epidemic they caused as much as humanly possible. After all, I will never know my stepsister because she died of an overdose before I got to meet her. (Her absence is felt every day in our family).
My personal business aside, I sometimes liked that this corrupt family was part of the story instead of the usual "mob" or "corrupt politician" that usually is the "bad guy" in these types of stories but I also felt like not enough was done to make them the actual villians they are. *Shrugs*
I also had a difficult time believing the MC was 29/30, although that could have been due to the narrators voice/age.
Thanks netgalley for my ALC.
SUMMARY: 29/30 yo therapist with an ED sees a new patient who tells her that her mother (therapist's mother) is in danger. The therapist replies that her mother died in a car accident (?) when she was 14, which lead to her ED. However the patient has the supposedly dead mother's bracelet that was not found at the scene of the accident/her death.
The therapist is now suspicious and starts investigating whether any of this is true. The more she looks the more questions/suspicious things she has/finds. For example, the undertaker never actually saw her mother's body. Her father made suspicious phone calls, etc. back then. She also learns about her mother's past history which she had no idea about. When she's not investigating her mother, she talks nonstop about her ED and when she's not talking about her ED and skipping meals in the now, we flash back to her teenage years with an ED and the month she was in rehab and then if that is still not enough we flash to her first marriage and her ED at that time and how it ruined her marriage. There is still more talk about her ED.
Eventually she gets some answers? I started skipping ahead at 70% because I couldn't stand one more minute of hearing about her ED or her skipping meals to get to the end and might have missed a little.
The 'main story' about the missing mother captivated me and despite being turned off/annoyed by several other parts of the book (more below) I pushed on to find out if the mother was still alive and what exactly was going on there.
That said, the unrelenting discussions about ED's and the character's ED and history of it started to make me feel like I was going to end up with an ED. At first I appreciated that a character had an ED and that is was explained and portrayed properly. However, it is at least 35% of the book if not more. It never stops. It is another MC. While I understand that is the reality for someone living with an ED (it is literally a MC in their head/life) it was too much here. I have not had an ED but imagine this would be extremely triggering and again, may make an ED "contagious" to some readers. It was relentless and too much. The editor really needed to pair some of that down.
The other part of the story I had mixed feelings about is this is more or less Sackler family fiction. I loathe and hate the Sackler family and the epidemic they caused as much as humanly possible. After all, I will never know my stepsister because she died of an overdose before I got to meet her. (Her absence is felt every day in our family).
My personal business aside, I sometimes liked that this corrupt family was part of the story instead of the usual "mob" or "corrupt politician" that usually is the "bad guy" in these types of stories but I also felt like not enough was done to make them the actual villians they are. *Shrugs*
I also had a difficult time believing the MC was 29/30, although that could have been due to the narrators voice/age.
Thanks netgalley for my ALC.
SUMMARY: 29/30 yo therapist with an ED sees a new patient who tells her that her mother (therapist's mother) is in danger. The therapist replies that her mother died in a car accident (?) when she was 14, which lead to her ED. However the patient has the supposedly dead mother's bracelet that was not found at the scene of the accident/her death.
The therapist is now suspicious and starts investigating whether any of this is true. The more she looks the more questions/suspicious things she has/finds. For example, the undertaker never actually saw her mother's body. Her father made suspicious phone calls, etc. back then. She also learns about her mother's past history which she had no idea about. When she's not investigating her mother, she talks nonstop about her ED and when she's not talking about her ED and skipping meals in the now, we flash back to her teenage years with an ED and the month she was in rehab and then if that is still not enough we flash to her first marriage and her ED at that time and how it ruined her marriage. There is still more talk about her ED.
Eventually she gets some answers? I started skipping ahead at 70% because I couldn't stand one more minute of hearing about her ED or her skipping meals to get to the end and might have missed a little.