A review by leahthebooklover
And Then She Vanished by Nick Jones

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

3.75

Time travel books are so wonderfully varied in how they tackle the subject. Sometimes a device or machine is involved, sometimes a portal or touchstone/object. In the case of Nick Jones's character Joseph Bridgeman, it's an altered state of consciousness that triggers his time traveling ability. The book doesn't try to get too science-y in providing an explanation of how this phenomenon might occur, the reader is simply asked to suspend their disbelief and go with the story. Once Joe learns he can indeed travel back through time, he spends a considerable amount of the rest of the book trying to gain control over his newfound ability, as well as trying to understand the"rules" that govern how far back he can travel, how long he can stay in the past, and the consequences of his actions in the past. His ultimate goal is to go back to a day 22 years in his past, a day he will never forget, because on that day, he was a 14 year old boy charged with accompanying his 7 year old sister Amy to a traveling fair.  When she disappears without a trace from the fair, in a split second, while he is distracted, his life is changed forever. He becomes obsessed with going back to the fair and finding out what happened to Amy, and perhaps even prevent her disappearance. As I said, the book doesn't dive too deeply into the science of HOW Joe can time travel, but there are some interesting discussions about the ethics and morality of changing the past, even for the noble purpose of saving a child's life. Both my husband and I enjoyed listening to this book, which is right in my wheelhouse (time travel and solving a mysterious disappearance? Yes, please!) but is far outside my husband's preferences. He thought it dragged a bit in the middle, but I appreciated the obstacles our main character had to overcome. Ray Porter narrates this book, and he's a talented narrator (one of the best, imo) but as other reviewers have noted, an odd decision was made in having him speak with an American accent for the main character Joe (and it's a first person narration), even though the setting is in England and the character is British. All of the other characters speak with a British accent, so it's a little jarring to have our main character's voice so out of place. Other than that, it was a solidly intriguing story.