5 STARS!!!

My mouth is still hanging open....what did I just read?!?

Let me tell you, if you love family secrets and the lifestyles of the rich in an idyllic town, you will be engrossed!!!

Emma's picture perfect façade is shattered when her alcoholic husband crashes his car through their garage and dies. Everyone's been keeping secrets and they all start to tumble out. I loved the multi-perspective points of view and all of the juicy secrets. I was able to guess a few, but there were many more to learn!!

Grab this book and curl up in your favorite chair with a cup of tea.

A special thank you to NetGalley, Gallery Books, and Kieran Scott for providing me with an ARC.

This book has so many tricks up its sleeves, and is a great transition to adult writing for YA author Kieran Scott. It starts out with the unexpected and dramatic death of Emma's husband James, and follows that with the perspectives of Emma, two of her friends, her daughter, and others, including some short glimpses of what happened in the hours leading up to James's accident. As Emma tries to make sense of what happened to James- and of what had happened over the years of their marriage- the web she has to unravel continues to get messier. The last 1/4 of the book will send you reeling.

One of the best thrillers I have read in years. Wish You Were Gone is a crazy, gorgeous tale that doesn't let up from page one. The twist at the end? To die for! Will be purchasing for the library's collection.

This is an engrossing read about how far people will go to keep up appearances. Emma, living with a raging alcoholic husband, hides from her friends and community just how dire her circumstances actually are. Not to mention the things her teenage children have witnessed and gone through at the hands of their father. It’s a quick read with many ups and downs, twists and turns.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my review.

This is a juicy page-turner about a family with a bunch of secrets, many of which are uncovered when the family patriarch James dies in a horrible and strange accident. But was it an accident?

The book is told from a large number of perspectives, from wife to daughter to wife’s friends, which sometimes got a little confusing, but the narration and plotting was always interesting. At times, the storylines and narration involving the children border on a YA feel, but then the author jumps back in to restore order with some narration from one of the adults.

The twists are great, and the pages practically turn themselves. The book ends with the scandalousness and shock I was hoping for as the suspense and tension built throughout.. A solid effort that makes me interested to read more by Kieran Scott. 3.5 stars.

Thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

The untimely demise of a hard drinking husband and father throws his long suffering wife and children and their entire community into a turmoil, when some very dark secrets are revealed. A good solid domestic drama/mystery.

Be careful what you wish for! Emma Walsh has created a perfect facade. Everyone in Oakmont thinks the Walshes are the ideal suburban family. James and Emma and their two children Hunter and Kelsey have everything. But you never know what goes on behind closed doors and what is behind the Walshes’ front door is not pretty.

James is an abusive alcoholic. When he crashes his car through the family garage after a late night, Emma, Hunter and Kelsey are not sorry. Now they have to negotiate life in a world without violence. Emma is supported by her two best friends and her children help each other. However, things change. A discovery leads Emma to believe that James’ death was not an accident. When many people have a reason to want someone dead, it’s hard to see who is guilty.

Wish You Were Gone is a domestic thriller combined with a mystery. Emma, Hunter and especially Kelsey are very likable characters. Haunted by denial and fear, they confront the reasons why they have acted in certain ways and Emma sees the damage an alcoholic inflicts on his family. 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery Books and Kieran Scott for this ARC.

Thank you to Gallery Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wish You Were Gone by Kieran Scott is a domestic thriller with surprises that you won't see coming. The story revolves around the family of James Walsh, who crashed his car into his house and died. Emma, his wife, and their teenage children Hunter and Kelsey have to deal with the aftermath. Also, Emma's best friends Gray and Lizzy are helping Emma get over his death. But is there more to James' death than meets the eye? Was his death an accident or murder? And what secrets was James hiding from everyone while he was still alive?

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1, which is from Emma's point of view:

"She tried to remember where her kids were. Hunter hadn’t been home when she went to bed. But Kelsey . . . what? God, how horrible was she that she couldn’t remember? In her room listening to show tunes? Watching Riverdale for the thousandth time? It was James’s fault that she couldn’t remember. Because he hadn’t shown up. He’d told her where to meet him and when, and she’d driven all the way into Manhattan to the Upper East Side and paid for parking and broken a sweat on the sidewalk and then she’d just sat there in the restaurant—alone. Full of adrenaline and righteous indignation—alone. So that when she finally came home she’d felt mind-bendingly idiotic and been so keyed up that she had to take an Ambien to fall asleep. Now, here she was, and the world was ending, and she couldn’t focus.
That was when Emma realized James wasn’t in their bed. She looked at the clock.
1:12 a.m. Well. This was a new low. Maybe this was the night he ­finally wouldn’t come home at all."

Overall, Wish You Were Gone is an intriguing domestic thriller with plenty of surprises. I was interested in the mystery of the dead husband and wanted to know more. I did take off 1 star because of the chapters from many different characters' viewpoints. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, because it's difficult for me to keep track of a large cast of characters, especially when they all have generic names. There were many times while reading this when I thought, who was this character again? I'm sure many people will be able to look over this aspect though. I took another star off because I felt like nothing was happening for the first half of the book. I prefer thrillers with a little bit more action or something to keep my interest. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above or if you're a fan of domestic thrillers, you can check out this book when it comes out in November!

Originally interested because of the "Dead to Me" comparison, and this book doesn't disappoint. Lots of twists to the story, some you can see coming, but some sneak up on you! Definitely a page turner and one that I would recommend.

Wow, I thought this was a fantastically written, fast paced, and intense book! Absolutely unputdownable! The character development was spot on, with such an unique and amazing writing style! It was deliciously dark and original in many ways! Twisty turns that make you dizzy, chilling chills, thrilling thrills, and gasp worthy shocks! A must read! Highly recommend!

Fun, easy read! Emma Walsh has a perfect-on-the-outside life. Her husband is a bigwig agent, they have plenty of money, social status, and admiration. But on the inside it’s falling apart. Emma is planning on telling her husband, James, that she wants a divorce, but he never shows up to their dinner date. Instead, he crashes into their garage and dies. But Emma is not sure it was an accident.

Thankyou Netgalley for the copy of wish you were gone. I haven’t read Kieran Scott’s prior work but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.
A wife of an angry drunk blue collar man finds him dead after he crashed into their garage. Dealing with the aftermath, Emma must learn and face the many secrets that her husband and her friends are hiding.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I have not read this author before, but the comparison to Dead To Me on Netflix drew me in to request the book.

If you enjoy multi generational tales you will like this book. Sometimes there are too many details to get bogged down with and that may have been the case here. More focus on after James died and the alcohol abuse as well as emotional abuse was a hard topic to read. Children and grandchildren children of alcoholics are affected for years in different ways and it hit close to home. I wanted to like this book and parts of it were really good.
3/5☆

Wish You Were Gone, was an exceptional novel that just goes to show you, you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

Emma and James are married and quite frankly, Emma is fed up with James and his alcohol abuse. James drinks and becomes full of rage and becomes emotionally abusive. Emma is getting ready to file for divorce. Having two children together, Emma needs to look out for her family.

But now James is dead.

Emma and her children are still devastated by what happened to James and have yet to come to terms with it until James' secrets are exposed.

This was an easy read that was intriguing and addicting early on. I absolutely loved the twists! I needed to know each one of the secrets and I was continually shocked as they were exposed. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a domestic thriller.

There is a reason this is described as being for fans of Netflix's "Dead to Me." There were a lot of similarities between the stories. This definitely had compelling twists and turns to keep you engaged.

Trigger warning: alcoholism, emotional abuse.

This book is a multiple POV story centered around the extremely wealthy Walsh family following the death of James, the alcoholic patriarch. It's basically a web of people connected to James, and the story alternates between several POVs (both adult and teen) as well as past and present while telling the story of the day before James' death and the days following.

I read this in basically one sitting - as soon as I started reading, I wanted to know what was actually going on, because there's A LOT going on. It's a little triggering if you've experienced alcoholism firsthand, particularly from a parent, so a content warning there even though it's mentioned in the blurb.

Will definitely recommend for the ease of the read and I liked the conclusion!

Thanks to Netgalley and Gallery Books for an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

James is dead after crashing his car into the garage and his family are not that sad about it. What seems like an accident from drinking too much starts to unravel. There are lots of secrets to unveil to get to the bottom of what happened that night. A little too many side stories and long winded for my taste.

This is an intense psychological thriller that will have you up late turning pages. It’s not light or sunny in any way, so be prepared to enter a tunnel of unhappiness with these characters. But if you enjoy tension and high stakes in your reads, this will be a good pick.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

#WishYouWereGone #NetGalley
Perfect suspense novel.
Emma Walsh’s looks-great-on-the-outside marriage is at the breaking point, and she’s finally worked up the courage to confront her husband James about his drinking—his alcoholic rages, his blackouts, the uncertainty and fear his behavior has created for her and their two kids. But James never shows up to meet her as planned, and all her righteous words go unsaid. And unsaid they remain, because the next time Emma sees James, his body is crumpled amidst the wreckage of his flashy car, smashed to its final resting place halfway through the back wall of their suburban house’s roomy garage.
In the aftermath of the fatal crash, she and her teenage children, Kelsey and Hunter, begin to imagine life without the looming, volcanic presence of their husband and father. Buoyed by the support of her two closest friends, Emma struggles to deal with her grief, complicated by the knowledge that James’s legacy as an upstanding business owner and family man shines only because so many people were so willing, for so long, to keep his secrets—secrets that twist into new and unexpected shapes as the mysterious details of his last day of life begin to come to light.
Everyone should read it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for giving me an advanced copy.

Whew! This book was not a cheerful one. I mean if you couldn't tell that by the description, obviously, but it was dark. lots of emotions, LOTS of emotions. Let's just say that after reading this book if James wasn't already Dead, you would want to kill him yourself, just to give Emma the break she needs.