And Then You Were Gone was an engrossing psychological thriller! I enjoyed the shocking beginning of the novel and how the suspense built as the story went on. Emily and her boyfriend Paolo are out for a weekend trip on a boat when she wakes up to find he’s gone. He is never found. But the police feel he is dead and suspect Emily in his death. Although Emily is now a child psychologist, she has struggled with her own mood swings and losing control. Things quickly become more and more suspenseful as Emily finds herself in more trouble and in the middle of an increasingly dangerous situation. I enjoyed author RJ Jacobs style of writing throughout this story. It was easy to read and really hard to put down!

Emily was in love when she stepped onto that boat. She feared being out on water, but she went with the man she loved because he asked her to. Then she wakes up and he is gone. Did he drown? Did he jump ship and manage to make it back to shore? She doesn't know. But she finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy and she learns that you really never know everything about someone, regardless of how close or intimate you may be. Good compelling read.

A good debut thriller, the main character fighting with not only the World around her, but also the World inside her! Murder, mystery, twists.

This was pretty good for a debut thriller, I liked the mental health rep, I love that the author used her own personal experiences and background in the story to help maintain the accuracy. However I found the main character to be unlikable and while she played the part of unreliable narrator perfectly it just didn't seem to stick for me. I never really cared about her too much. But the story itself overall a solid 3.5.

Woahhhh another excellent thriller that was released this year! I have not read any novels from R.J. Jacobs and I am SO glad that I read this one! I think y'all will really like it... there is nothing like a good suspense novel to keep your mind sharp!

Not bad for a thriller. I can sometimes be harsh in my opinions, but I really didn’t come across a lot of the usual things that annoy me in thrillers. While it’s not the most original, groundbreaking concept, it’s still interesting enough to follow for a whole novel.

And Then You Were Gone is psychological thriller. The story follows Emily, a woman with bipolar disorder, who is on a desperate search to find out what really happened to her boyfriend after he disappeared without a trace from a boating trip.

The strength of this book was clearly in the author's expertise as a mental health professional. The portrayal of Emil's struggle with her illness and struggle's to stay well is very real, painful and hopeful. The thriller aspect was a bit slow for me and I did figure out the twists a bit early. Still, an interesting story line.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the eGalley of this novel. All opinions are my own.

Predictable and quite superficial

Emily is a child psychologist who is trying her utmost to stabilise her life and manage her bipolar disorder. She finds a sense of purpose in her relationship with Paolo. Despite her fear of water, he convinces her to take the boat out for the evening. Hysteria rises as they move further from land, but eventually, the Ativan brings some calm. Little does she know that by morning things would have gone horribly wrong.

Paolo, along with a prominent scientist, is working on a vaccine to curb the H1-N24 outbreak which seems to be occurring every two years. Emily makes allowances for his long hours at work, but when she loses him, she is confronted with the suspicion that his hours at the lab might not have been what he made it out to be. A visit from Paolo’s attractive colleague adds to her long list of questions. Suddenly a double-murder suspect, Emily has no choice but to start an investigation into the activities at the lab. She fights to come to terms with her loss, and though she tries to keep her sanity intact, it seems that the vortex will suck her in and destroy her.

The novel reads fluidly, and Jacobs depicts the protagonist's sense of hopeless desperation very well. However, I found the storyline very predictable and quite superficial in some places. Too much writing was dedicated to stating the obvious.

Ange

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

it’s a book about a woman who wakes up on a boat to find her boyfriend missing, with no memory of what happened, the amnesia turns out to be largely irrelevant, and there’s a lot more to it than that.

Set in Nashville, Tennessee, this is told from the point of view of Emily, a child psychologist whose bipolar disorder is finally under control. When her hunky Argentinian boyfriend Paolo, a medical researcher, suggests a romantic night sailing on a lake, Emily goes along with it, despite never having learned to swim. Crushed by his disappearance and under suspicion by the police, she makes a series of bad decisions as her illness spirals out of control, but when one of Paolo’s former colleagues confides her suspicions that something untoward is happening at the lab, Emily will risk everything to discover the truth.

This is the second book in a row about skulduggery in medical research, in this case it’s about the quest for a vaccine for a highly pathogenic influenza variant. This is just the backdrop really and there wasn’t much medical stuff in it. Emily is a frustrating character to follow as her illness makes her unreliable both as a friend, an amateur detective, and a narrator, but the portrayal of bipolar disease was well done. The suspense took a while to build but the pace ramped up in the last quarter, leading to a satisfying if somewhat predictable outcome. The writing was crisp and fluent, and I’d happily read more from this author.

This book was promoted as good for fans of Alice Feeney and BA Paris so I was really excited to get an ARC of this book as I am fans of them both.

This book did not disappoint; it was tense and suspenseful. Also a quick read.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

"And Then You Were Gone" by R.J. Jacobs was the prefect book to read when I wanted a little bit of the unknown. This book kept me guessing what was going to happen next, which character to trust and definitely what the ending was going to be! Unfortunately for me I was not able to read the book in one sitting, but when I did get to continue the book I was able to pick right back up where I left off. I liked that the main character had a mental illness that kept her and others questioning her story. The reason behind Paolo's disappearance and the murders was a good story. Overall I would definitely recommend this book 4 out of 5 stars! Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my copy of this book for my honest opinion.

I had a hard time connecting with this book, and I'm not sure why. I love a good psychological thriller, so this is right up my alley. I love an unstable, unreliable narrator, which this book offers. I love good twists and turns, which this book also delivers.

But in the case of this book, I could not connect with the characters, I found the plot moved rather slowly and the story was a bit predictable.

In the end, this one just didn't flow as smoothly for me as I would have liked.

I am so disappointed in this book.  It had so much potential. Instead, the writing was only average with cheesy one liners at the end of each chapter; none of the characters were likeable.  The main character stressed me out endlessly! She is bipolar and wouldn’t take her medicine so that she could “focus” on trying to find her boyfriend. The premise of the book was promising, a vaccine being used as bioterrorism, but it fell flat.  I felt there could have been more suspense about that part of the plot instead of looking for a killer. The “twist” at the end was predictable. I really wanted to like this one but weak writing and plot development just didn’t work for me.

I was going to read this in time for publication day, but when I picked it up to start and had a look at the blurb, thought “oh no, not another amnesia plot line!” and put it aside. Fortunately I came back to it, and discovered that while yes, it’s a book about a woman who wakes up on a boat to find her boyfriend missing, with no memory of what happened, the amnesia turns out to be largely irrelevant, and there’s a lot more to it than that.

Set in Nashville, Tennessee, this is told from the point of view of Emily, a child psychologist whose bipolar disorder is finally under control. When her hunky Argentinian boyfriend Paolo, a medical researcher, suggests a romantic night sailing on a lake, Emily goes along with it, despite never having learned to swim. Crushed by his disappearance and under suspicion by the police, she makes a series of bad decisions as her illness spirals out of control, but when one of Paolo’s former colleagues confides her suspicions that something untoward is happening at the lab, Emily will risk everything to discover the truth.

This is the second book in a row about skulduggery in medical research, in this case it’s about the quest for a vaccine for a highly pathogenic influenza variant. This is just the backdrop really and there wasn’t much medical stuff in it. Emily is a frustrating character to follow as her illness makes her unreliable both as a friend, an amateur detective, and a narrator, but the portrayal of bipolar disease was well done. The suspense took a while to build but the pace ramped up in the last quarter, leading to a satisfying if somewhat predictable outcome. The writing was crisp and fluent, and I’d happily read more from this author.

My thanks to NetGalley for the arc which allowed me to give an honest review.
And Then You Were Gone is available now.

Emily Firestone is in a good place in her life, and I don’t just mean her apartment in Nashville. After years of struggling with a very difficult bipolar disorder, she finally has her spinning mind under control. She has a job she loves—working with children as a psychologist—and a good relationship with biochemist Paolo, when he’s not deep in the research lab. So when he suggests an overnight trip on a boat, she agrees, even though she can’t swim.

The boat trip starts out beautifully. The lake outside of Nashville is beautiful, and the boat calmly slices through the water. Emily’s anxiety is up, because of the water, so she takes a pill and opens some wine. But soon she is relaxed and enjoying herself, laughing with Paolo as he swims with the fish and plays with his camera, his favorite hobby.

But when Emily wakes up the next morning, Paolo is no longer on the boat. She calls for him and waits, searching the water, but she can’t find him anywhere. Finally, she has to do something, so she manages to get the boat back to the dock and have someone call the police.

As the investigation goes on, and Emily is looked at closely as a potential killer, she loses her composure more and more. Her mania rises back to the surface, and her mind spins out of control as she tries to figure out if Paolo was murdered, and by whom. It will take her all of her resources to figure out what’s going on and to get herself out of danger, but with her mental illness, does she have what it takes to solve the puzzle in time?

Author and psychologist R. J. Jacobs has crafted a clever thriller with one of the best treats, an unreliable narrator. Emily, with her anxiety and bipolar disorder, her looseness with her pills and lack of sleep, takes us on a twisty tour of the darkest parts of her mind as she struggles with the disappearance of her boyfriend and the resulting investigation. And Then You Were Gone is a solid story about a young woman on the edge, and getting a glimpse into the mind of a bipolar woman spinning out of control is enlightening.

Galleys for And Then You Were Gone were provided by Crooked Lane Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.

And Then You Were Gone by R.J. Jacobs is a contemporary thriller that will appeal to the reader who is content to let the plot unfurl at its own unhurried pace. This novel grabbed my attention at the start, then lost steam for multiple chapters, and ultimately redeemed itself with a strong ending with a twist.

Our female protagonist is Emily Firestone, a child psychologist with bipolar disorder. I did appreciate that the author took the time to include some of the challenges faced by Emily as a result of this disorder during the course of her first person account of events. Emily and boyfriend Paolo appear to be a couple very much in love, and decide to have a romantic overnight on a rented sailboat. All is well until the next morning when Emily wakes up, Paolo is missing, and our narrator has no recollection of the night before. Has Paolo had an accident, or is foul play involved?

Following this promising premise, the novel seems to meander through a plotline that just did not hold my attention in a way that a thriller should. The ending, however, does deliver a few surprises and some nail-biting suspense.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and R. J. Jacobs for the chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Emily Firestone finally has her life together. After years battling to find an even keel she has her bipolar disorder under control and is happy: she is working as a psychologist with children, her own apartment, and is madly in love with her boyfriend, Paolo.

When Paolo suggests a weekend sailing Emily ignores her fears of water and agrees to the trip. After a perfect first night she wakes to find him gone. She alerts the police but is certain that as a strong swimmer he couldn’t have drowned and that he didn’t just up and leave her. When the Police declare Emily the only suspect in his death she knows finding the truth is the only way to clear her name, a task that seems impossible as her life falls apart piece by piece.

But then one of Paolo’s coworkers contacts her saying she has evidence that Paolo was murdered by someone close to him. Increasingly desperate to clear her name, Emily tries to find further proof but finds her mania intruding her thoughts more and more as she races against the clock to not only uncover what really happened to Paolo but to also keep her grip on reality.

This book was a breathtaking roller-coaster ride. R. J. Jacobs has written a compulsive, thrilling and unpredictable debut novel that I couldn't put down.

Emily was an unreliable protagonist but also one I loved. Seeing her battle against her paranoia was riveting. She herself couldn’t trust the truth and accuracy of her recollection of events or what she was thinking which added an extra layer of uncertainty to whether or not you could believe her version of events, while also making her a character that is interesting to read. The author’s background as a psychologist shines through in these intricate details of Emily’s character and her bipolar II. The expressive language used to describe her thoughts and feelings enabled me to understand her and put myself in her shoes even though I have never lived with her condition. I also found the tidbits of information about how and why the brain works the way it does really interesting and it helped me understand mental health in a new way.

And Then You Were Gone is a fabulous psychological thriller that keeps you guessing as you are never quite sure what to believe. Filled with with surprising twists, turns and revelations this is a book that has you on the edge of your seat until the end. R. J. Jacobs is a talented new voice in fiction and I’m excited to see what he writes next.

Emily is a child psychologist who is looking into what happened to her boyfriend. He disappeared off a boat while they where on a weekend get away. Emily is driving herself crazy trying to find out what happened.. R.J. Jacobs is a good author whose characters are likeable. Will be looking for other books by this author. I want to thank Netgalley for the opportunity to read this arc for my honest opinion.

I liked getting to know Emily and Paolo in the beginning. Seeing them driving to their weekend getaway was very cute and I liked watching them in their relationship. This is how the reader is introduced to both characters and I liked watching from Emily’s point of view, both with Paolo and when she wakes up alone.

The mystery in the story starts very early, right after they are on the boat, and is a main thread throughout the remainder of the work. It was interesting seeing Emily react to her situation, find a way out, and work through the mystery on her own while the investigation takes place. I liked watching Emily work and seeing how the stress of the situation caused her to unravel in her own way.

The mystery itself could have been a bit more puzzle-like. As a reader I couldn’t really work on the puzzle on my own, it was mostly Emily doing the work and the reader watching. I had some suspicions, but because of the structure I basically had to watch Emily do the work.

I did appreciate the secondary characters, but they felt a little flat for the most part. I did like Cal, he was a nice balance to Emily, but I wished the story dug into his character a bit more. Paolo was pretty much a secondary character and he was okay, but I wasn’t sold on him being a good partner for Emily. I did like how he played into the mystery, and the end had a good twist, it just wasn’t amazing for me.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fast-paced, character focused mysteries and thrillers. This was a good read because it stayed tight to the main mystery and main character with secondary elements that enhance and help piece the puzzle together.

This story is quite the whirlwind as you try to follow the connections between the different events that have happened with the main character, Emily, and given her difficulties it can be a hard thing to do but it is well worth it to stay for the ride!