This taut domestic thriller centers around what seems to be a bizarre accidental death. The overriding question concerning this husband/father/business partner is how he survived so long when he was despised by so many. Scott gives us some plausible suspects and keeps the tension at a high level before the dramatic twist at the end. That this twist is somewhat unlikely is a hazard of the genre, and doesn't detract from a generally solid and well-written novel.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing to me so I requested a copy to read.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during this 2nd attempt, I have
decided to stop reading this book
and state that this book just wasn't for me.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Wow! The plot of this book was intense and I loved the way the author developed and cliff hanged each and every chapter that merged into the next. Scott gave you just enough that you had to read the next chapter or go crazy not knowing!

You got a little bit of everything in this book. Bestfriends, parenting, high school teenage drama, marriage, betrayal, and more! The book definitely emphasizes you don't know what goes on behind other people's closed doors. All aboard the Hot Mess Express! Have your tickets ready!

Thank you to Simon & Schuster along with Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wish You Were Gone is a roller coaster ride, you are going to need to buckle your seat belt. This book has so many twists and turn from different points of view the past and the present, you will be waiting with baited breath until the very last page.

The book starts with Emma awakened from sleep feeling the house shake. Trying to get her bearings she realizes the kids are not home, and her husband is not in bed, yet. James Walsh drunkenly drives his car into the back of his garage killing himself accidentally. The lives of the Walsh family will unravel and there are many secrets to be revealed including Emma's friends. The question is who will come out unscathed when all of the secrets are told.

I love books told with multiple POVs and across various timelines and this has both! It kept me on the edge of my seat and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.

Emma’s world turns upside down when her husband drives home drunk and ends up crashing his car through the garage. In the wake of his death, she starts learning that her husband wasn’t just an alcoholic and his death may not have been an accident. With secrets galore, there were lots of surprises in this novel and it kept me guessing.

I loved how many different narrators this book had. It gave us such a bigger picture of everything going on and it made the story so much more than just about Emma’s husband’s death. There were twists I didn’t see coming until I was right on top of them and it made the book really fun.

This was a pretty fast read that held my interest the entire time. If you’re into mysteries and like your novels to have some twists and turns, this is definitely for you.

Thank you to Gallery and NetGalley for a copy of this novel.

Wish You Were Gone starts out with a bang. Well really more of a crash I suppose. James Walsh drunkenly drives his car into the back of his garage killing himself in what appears to be a tragic accident. But is it really so tragic? James and his family were living the dream, at least as it appeared to those on the outside. Behind closed doors however, things were anything but idyllic. The home was full of violence and deceit, and no one close to James is all too upset he’s gone. Perhaps the more pressing question however is not whether or not it was tragic, but whether it was actually an accident…

The first few chapters pulled me in right away and I was really excited to pick this back up to continue it. Unfortunately soon my enthusiasm waned. There was a large cast of characters (by the end, there were chapters from 8 different perspectives) and I found myself distracted from the story as I was constantly trying to remember who was who. Once I got my bearings however, I did begin to enjoy it again, and I was excited to find out what happened. In a rarity for me, I did actually enjoy the way things came together in the end. The pieces all fit well, and I appreciated the author putting work into making a puzzle that came together bit by bit, and that wasn’t crazy or outlandish. The epilogue however wasn’t my favorite, and I’ll be very curious to hear what others have to say about it after this comes out!

I also simply did not understand the relationship, or lack thereof, between the widow Emma’s two best friends. The two were constantly sniping at each other and battling to be the “best” friend as if this was middle school. Certainly in friend groups, even as adults, not everyone gets along. But there was no underlying reason or explanation given for why these two women disliked each other so much, other than simply wanting Emma for themselves. So much time was spent on this and I just cannot understand why. Everything else was so well plotted; I expected there at least to be some kind of plot payoff from having to read about this terribly annoying rivalry, but really nothing came of it. I’m baffled, I tell you. Baffled.

Loved this. Very moving. Fast paced reading. Great story. Awesome characters. Best book I've read in awhile. Kept me reading well into the night.

Loved this domestic thriller! Very well executed with so many hairpin turns! And wow I did not see that ending coming. Nice and twisty storyline with so many surprises.
Highly recommend
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book

This was much better than I thought it was going to be. I loved the main characters: Emma, Kelsey, Hunter and James, great characterization. James is a rich business with a drinking problem that becomes abusive. Emma and her children wish constantly that James would quit drinking or go away. Obviously, the go away part happens and the aftermath of James' life unfolds., So many secrets and work associates willing to keep them so they continue to make money for their business.

The reveals on the book were great, and this book is decently paced. This is my first book by this author and will not be my last. Well-written, not predictable and kept me interested. Recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Kieran Scott and Gallery Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 11/2/21

3.5 STARS

This one started off with a bang, a crash and a dead husband in the garage. He wasn't a good guy though, he terrorized his own family with his drunken behavior.

Will they be sad that he is gone?

There were quite a few character perspectives to keep up with, it took me awhile to sort out who was who. I had to remind myself who the wife was, who the friends were, the kids, husbands, etc. as the chapters alternate frequently.

Overall, it was an engaging domestic story with moments of suspense. I never really connected or became invested in the characters though, they weren't very unlikeable, I should have felt sympathy for them, but I didn't.

Careful what you wish for! What you think should be a tragedy isn't. This book was so good! A bit crazy and nuts, but in the best possible way! I admit I felt for Emma and her kids. Terrific writing and so compelling all the way through. Let me breathless and on the edge of my seat! Thank you so much!

I have met a lot of people who have a public persona which says “fun” and “charming” but behind closed doors, they are anything but.

This story takes this idea and digs a little deeper.

What if the death of a husband and father, isn’t devastating to the wife and children who had to live with him, behind closed doors?!

James arrives home after drinking, again, but this time, he plows right through their garage, his body crumpled in the wreckage of his flashy car. He is pronounced dead at the scene.

But, what if it wasn’t the accident that everyone thought it was?

This becomes a greater possibility as everyone’s secrets began to spill out, and the short chapters and alternating viewpoints had me flipping the pages to find out WHO was involved.

The pace was taut, and I was never bored.

I haven’t seen the Netflix show “Dead to Me” or read any of author Kieran Scott’s YA novels, but if she is going to stay in this lane, Domestic Suspense for adults, count me in as a new fan who will be requesting future work!

Thank You to Gallery Books for the gifted copy provided through NetGalley. It was my pleasure to offer a candid review!

Expected Publication date: November 2, 2021.

3 stars

Any character in this novel could easily utter the titular phrase to the deceased character, and readers would have no arguments. James, the guy who dies and on whose death this novel centers, is NOT a good dude. Interestingly, he seems to be in great company.

There are *many* characters in this novel, and they alternate perspectives on a constant rotation, but Emma, James's widow, is the consistent point of connection. When Emma's husband is found dead in their garage right at the start of the novel, all of these characters offer insight into his bad behavior. His wife, his kids, his business partner, his wife's friends...everyone has something to say. While I am typically a fan of multi-perspective novels, especially in this genre, I found the constant movement distracting here. By the end, I definitely knew more about the characters, but I didn't feel like I knew THEM, and this is something I'd have liked to amend. It's significant that these characters are not just flawed. I had a hard time developing sympathy or empathy for any of them. I never became invested in who killed James because his death clearly makes the world a better place; it's undisputed. That noted, I needed to care about some of the remaining folks to get invested, and this just never happened for me. I really wanted to experience more complexity.

The bones are good here, but for me this is a decent - not excellent - read. I am still grappling with the _Dead to Me_ comparison in the promotional notes. Aside from a dead person and some middle aged white women, I'm not sure how readers are supposed to experience this comparison. I'll look forward to reading more from Scott but will hope for more layered characters in future efforts.

Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott is a thriller novel. This one is told by changing the point of view between multiple characters, I believe eight of them. It’s also a novel that is told in different times starting at the accident then having chapters going back to the events leading up to it.

Emma Walsh is one of those people that from the outside it looks like she has everything. A wonderful husband, great kids, nice home. But of course things are not always what you see from the outside. You see Emma is ready to tell her husband that she wants a divorce, that she is tired of his abuse and drunken antics, not only abuse of her but the children too. Just as Emma is about to break the news though her husband doesn’t show up for the meeting and later that night comes home drunk and kills himself running his car into the back of their garage. Is it wrong to feel relief?

Now the first thing I will say about Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott is that I know my description on the style of this one may sounds as if it might be confusing but it really wasn’t. Everything in the story is clearly marked and it didn’t take long at all to fall right into the story with each character standing out on their own. I picked this one up with it’s comparison to Dead to Me loving that show and I can see that comparison but the story definitely had it’s own flavor which kept the pages turning the entire time I read. If this one sounds good to you I’d definitely say give it a shot.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I've loved Kieran Scott (also known as Kate Brian) for many, many years. Her PRIVATE series has been on my list to reread (or at least finally complete) for YEARS. I hold that series up with GOSSIP GIRL and THE A-LIST as some of my favorite addicting series about rich and/or terrible teenagers. As Kate Brian, she blew me away with the SHADOWLANDS trilogy (some of the first reviews on my blog!). She also wrote a fun mythology-based trilogy a number of years ago that I really enjoyed as Kieran Scott. Since then, she wrote two horror/mysteries (that I haven't gained the confidence to read yet) and a fun political-ish YA thriller. I love that she's taken a turn writing adult mystery/thrillers because honestly it seemed right up her alley.

WISH YOU WERE GONE is her adult fiction debut. It follows a family rattled by the sudden death of the patriarch. Emma and her son, Hunter, hear a crash one night and discover that her husband, James, has crashed through the garage and died. They both know he was probably drunk at the time. Her daughter, Kelsey, rushes home to see what's happened. Turns out, James wasn't the best guy and has more secrets than he can count. The story alternates between multiple characters, including Emma and her kids, to really understand who James was. There's an interesting power struggle between Lizzie and Gray, Emma's two best friends who don't really get along, and Gray's husband (James' business partner).

This was a super addicting story that I was eager to finish once I really got into it. There were so many twists and turns. Naturally Emma, her friends, and her kids try to pursue "leads" about James's last day (how is it possible that his leg is out of the car if he crashed into the garage and died on impact? Why is his tie in the bushes?) and learn all they can about his life. Like I said, he had plenty of secrets - some were known to others in town and some were known by no one.

Usually when reading mysteries or thrillers, I can come up with a theory or two that ends up partially true or mostly true. It sometimes takes the fun out of reading because I don't get nearly as shocked as I want to. With WISH YOU WERE GONE, I was constantly surprised. I thought some reveals were too easy, only to learn even more shocking twists in the coming chapters.

Overall, this was an impressive debut in a new genre for Kieran Scott - I hope she has more stories like these in the works!

This book starts out with a bang, literally....Emma hears a bang in the middle of the night. Emma's husband, James, dead in the garage. The cops think he is just another victim of drunk driving but Emma thinks differently. The book is done in my favourite format...many different perspectives, each chapter a different character. I loved getting the different points of view from each character, even though not all of them are likeable ones and every single one is hiding something...I found that made it incredibly hard to detect the outcome. I loved that!

The best part about this book is the wonderful writing. Kieran Scott's got a great understanding of the complexities of relationships, and reading about Emma's marriage felt like looking into the window of another's life and it made it such an interesting read. You may or may not see the twists coming, but it will be an engaging journey to get there.

James Walsh is an alcoholic, so when he crashes his car into the garage and is killed, his family isn't really surprised. And they aren't really sad either. James was not the perfect man he seemed to be to others. There is definitely a lot of family drama in this book... a psychological thriller with multiple POV's that give you a sense that no one really liked James and they all had wished he was gone at some point. But what exactly happened to James? Was it an accident? Suicide? or Murder? Things are not what they seem.

I enjoyed the short chapters and the characters were all so different. Although I guessed some of the secrets the family and friends were keeping, I did not expect the twist at the end.

Wish You Were Gone has a very promising premis but unfortunately I did not find that it delivered. I found it lackluster, drawn out and a bit dull.

Imagine it’s a bit after midnight. You’re sound asleep, when you hear a huge bang and the house starts shaking. You might assume an earthquake has hit. You might wonder if there was a bomb. You probably wouldn’t assume that your drunk husband drove into the house, killing himself, but that’s exactly what Emma Walsh woke up to one night.

As she and her kids, Kelsey and Hunter, look upon the gruesome scene, they feel more relief than sadness. James wasn’t a bad man to begin with, but a little (big) problem with alcohol has made him violent, cruel and terrifying to live with. This accident, while awful, may be the chance for them to finally make some changes in their lives.

While the days go by, Emma is finding herself mourning the loss of her husband, as he was before his drinking took over. How did everything come to this point? As she’s sitting there pondering, a man from their lawn service brings her a necktie he found in the bushes. It’s her husband’s, and it’s the one he was wearing the night he died. But why would a drunk man stop to throw his tie in the bushes before passing out and hitting the house?

Emma starts to feel like something is wrong with the way her husband died, but everywhere she looks, all she finds are more questions. What kind of a man was her husband? What was he up to before he died? Who was he spending his time with? Was someone with him the night he died?

I’d definitely call this a “slow burn” thriller. It was good, but almost too slow, leaving me trying to decide between a three or four star review. The ending had a few twists that I definitely didn’t see coming, and then after the ending, one more piece of the puzzle comes out ... and it’s pretty good. I’m giving this a 3.5, rounded up because the ending was worth the wait!

(I’d like to thank the publisher, author and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)

This was my first novel by Kieran Scott and it sure won't be my last! I enjoyed all of the twists and turns this novel took. It felt like I was piecing a puzzle back together slowly with all of the different POVs. This was fast paced, juicy and entertaining!

Thank you to Netgalley and Kieran Scott for the advance copy in exchange for my review!!!!