Thank you @stmartinspress for the complimentary ARC and @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for the complimentary ALC.

I love Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s books so was looking forward to this solo novel.

Fun fact, my very first Instagram giveaway win was a copy of An Anonymous Girl, signed by Pekkanen. I think I had about 5 followers, they were all friends, and I still didn’t know bookstagram was a thing. I was so shocked cause I assumed someone with followers would win. I cherish that book!

Gone tonight was so much fun! Normally I like my thrillers to move at a breakneck pace, but this was more of a slow burn. I loved it! I relished the chapters told in alternating POV’S: Catherine trying to figure out her mother tiny clue by tiny clue, while Ruth revealed her truth to us in bits and pieces. The suspense was killing me, to the point that I checked Netgalley for the audio so I could continue listening when I couldn’t read. I did predict the ending and the twist which I was a bit bummed about. However!!! I was never 100% sure I was right, and I still thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

Kate Mara did an excellent job as narrator, but I equally enjoyed reading the physical book, so I highly recommend both.

A Mother and Daughter’s Story of Resolve and Resilience

SUMMARY
Ruth Sterling, 42, is exhausted every night when she comes home after her waitressing shift. She does it all for her daughter, Catherine, 24. It’s just the two of them, and Ruth has done and will do whatever it takes to keep Catherine safe. Catherine doesn’t understand why her mother is so secretive about her past, constantly changing apartments, and so controlling. Catherine is now a recent nursing school graduate and can’t wait to start her new job in a new city, all by herself.

But Ruth has recently been showing classic signs of dementia. The two visited a doctor who agreed with the diagnosis. Catherine, whose nursing specialty is dementia and Alzheimer’s, decides she will forgo her new job to stay and take care of her mom. Ruth seems to be going downhill rapidly. Maybe Catherine can get ahold of Ruth’s family to help, but her mother has told her nothing about her family or childhood. Catherine desperately wants to reach out to them to get some help. But Catherine’s secret research puts them both in the middle of the danger from her past that Ruth has been trying desperately to keep them away from.

REVIEW
GONE TONIGHT is a book about resolve and resilience. Ruth hides from her past, while Catherine tries to create her future. Ruth and Catherine are as close as a mother and daughter can be, but secrets still exist between them.

The book has a nice rhythm to it. The story is told from alternating points of view between Catherine and Ruth and skillfully delves into Ruth’s secret past as a cornerstone of the story. Author Sarah Pekkanen’s writing is intriguing and cleverly layered. She keeps your head in the story.

The story is memorable, showcasing a mother/daughter relationship and the incredible depth a mother will go to to protect her child and outrun her past. Ruth and Catherine’s characters were interesting. They propelled the narrative with perseverance, tenancy, and resilience.

Pekkanen has written eight contemporary fiction novels and co-authored four bestselling thrillers. The audiobook narrator Kate Mara’s performance and voice align with the story’s tone. Her delivery and her pacing is superb, and she keeps listeners engaged.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Publisher Macmillan Audio
Published August 1, 2023
Narrated Kate Marra
Review www.bluestockingreviews.com

How well do we really know the people we think we know the most? Ruth and Catherine are a mother and daughter who are very close. But maybe there are some secrets between them that they’ve never known.

This was a compelling read that kept me going to see what would happen next. I really enjoyed the audiobook narration. Thank you to Macmillan Audio, St Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the audiobook to review.

Catherine is about to start a job in a new city when she finds out her mother Ruth might be suffering from early onset Alzheimer's. When cracks in her story emerge, she discovers dangerous secrets about her mothers past and starts to question everything. This was super orginal comapred to a lot of mystery/thrillers I've read lately and I absolutely flew through it.

Thrilling novel from Sarah Pekkanen, normally part of the writing team with Gail Hendricks who've released countless page turners like the Wife Between Us.

Gone Tonight was written similarly to those, toggling between two POVs, Ruth who was a runaway teen mom now in her 40s and Catherine, her daughter now 24 years old working as a nurse in a retirement home. Catherine gets the job opportunity she's been waiting for at Johns Hopkins, but that would mean she'd have to move away from mother, the only parent and family she's known her whole life. When Ruth suddenly develops early onset Alzheimers, knowing what she knows about how this illness progress, Catherine decides she must decline this job opportunity to stay and care for her mother. When she starts to dig deeper into her mother's life, however, many things don't add up. She's then suspicious of her mother faking her illness in order to control her life and keep her close.... but why? The more she digs up, the more thrilling the story gets.

Despite a few questionable details in the Ruth chapters describing the past, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Well-paced and exciting story with great character development. Great exploration into the complicatedness of a mother-daughter relationship.

The audiobook was narrated by actress Kate Mara, who of course read fantastically throughout. A great, fun and cozy weekend read.

Big thanks to Netgalley for the ARC copy.

I enjoyed this suspenseful drama from Sarah Pekkanen about a unique mother/daughter relationship.

Ruth Sterling was a teen mom who raised her daughter Catherine all alone. Her only goal in life has been to keep her daughter safe, and she is willing to do ANYTHING to make sure Catherine stays safe. When Catherine learns that her mother has been keeping some secrets, it leads her on a journey to find out the truth, not knowing the danger that lies ahead.

I listened to this on audiobook, and it was a super fast listen! I was surprised by how quickly I finished and how I stay engaged with the story from start to finish. The narrator is Kate Mara, and I thought the narration was fine but her tone is fairly monotone and not super engaging. But I thought it worked with the tone of the story and was not bothered by it.

This book is a great option if you want to read something entertaining and easy but also engaging and suspenseful!

Get ready to stay up half the night if you start reading this one! It’s a well-constructed thriller with lots of unexpected twists and two unforgettable main characters.

Ruth Sterling and her adult daughter Catherine are enmeshed in each other’s lives to an unhealthy degree, but there are good reasons for that. Ruth was a teenage single mom with no family support, and part of the novel is her memoir of how she earned enough money to support herself and her baby. It’s interesting reading.

The other part of the novel is in the present day, and alternates between Ruth’s and Catherine’s POV. Catherine is aware her Mom hides a lot of information about both her past and her present day activities, and she’s on a mission to discover her Mom’s secrets. She doesn’t anticipate that digging into Ruth’s past will be very dangerous for them both, and the suspense builds and builds as we readers see Catherine being oblivious to the information that Ruth is protecting her from.

The end of the novel was a little unsatisfying for me, but overall I really liked this book. Anyone who likes contemporary thrillers will women main characters would enjoy this book. I’m giving Gone Tonight a solid four stars.

I’m grateful to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me both the eARC and the audiobook ARC of Gone Tonight.

This was a slow burn. I enjoyed the narrator. Her voice and Sarah Pekkanen"s words dragged me kicking and screaming into the lives of Ruth and her daughter Katherine. This story is weaved thru each persons point of view.

My only struggle was Katherine as a character but then again I've never been put in a position to not have a clue about my mother's past.

I enjoyed the story about a mother who would do anything to protect her daughter even fake Alzheimer's. And a daughter who would go to great lengths to discover what her mother is hiding

Sarah Pekkanen’s books, along with her co-author Greer Hendricks, have always been my go-to for a great thriller. While Gone Tonight was entertaining, Pekkanen’s solo release just didn’t have the same level of intrigue for me.

The book is told in two different timelines, from the POV of Ruth and her daughter, Catherine. Throughout Catherine’s entire life, Ruth has kept her past a secret. Now that Catherine is in her 20s and planning to spread her wings, she questions Ruth’s motivations to keep them inseparable.

In my opinion, Gone Tomorrow missed the mark. It was more of a domestic drama than a thriller. The ending was fairly predictable and there wasn’t too much “thrill,” since so much was revealed early in the book. I found the premise to be a bit contrived and there were too many plot holes. That Facebook search was quite absurd!!

As I said, the book was at least entertaining, but ultimately, it wasn’t up to the same level of perfection I expect from Pekkanens and Hendricks’ joint ventures.

The audiobook narrator, Kate Mara, was fantastic and did a great job narrating both characters.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother's past or background. But when Ruth's desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth's carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.

I LOVED Kate Mara as a narrator for this novel and the dual POV (plus some dual timeline) kept me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for their next thriller read!

A daughter begins to wonder about why her mom is so secretive about her past. The mom will do anything to keep her daughter safe.

This was ok. A lot could've been solved by simply communicating with each other, but that is often the issue. I liked the alternating POV's and of course the narrator was great.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange of an honest review.

Sarah Pekkanen shows the length a mother would go to in order to protect their child:

It has always been Catherine and her mother Ruth. Ruth ran away when she was pregnant with Catherine as a teen and had been kicked out of the house by her parents or so Catherine thought. Catherine is ready to move on with her life and to live her own life and create a career for herself. Ruth has not been honest with her daughter, and it turns out that Catherine is not the person that Ruth thought she was. But Ruth has been protecting her daughter her whole life and will do anything to keep her by her side, she needs to keep her safe.

I have only read Sarah Pekkanen when she is co-author with Geer Hendricks, so I was interested to see what Pekkanen was able to do on her own. This a good domestic suspense book but you need to get through the slowness of the first 30% of the book. In that first 30% you're really kept waiting as to what Ruth (Ava) ran away from when she was a pregnant teenager and why she has kept running ever sense. In the first 30% I found that Ruth's life before were the more interesting parts, the present day were more just depressing with Ruth being diagnosed with Alzheimers. Once you are past the 30% mark, things really start to pick up as more and more information is revealed.

This book is all about manipulation, and manipulation not only between Ruth and Catherine but also the other people in their lives. If you enjoy manipulation and the lengths that people will go to in order to get their way and spread lies, then you will enjoy this book.

There are some aspects in the book that really raise the concept of nature vs nature as you learn more about what Ruth is running from as well as the upbringing that Catherine has had. I kept coming back to this question as I read further and further into the book and even more so towards the end. This is also a worry for Ruth as well, for more than one reason.

For the audio version I’m glad that they put the name of the character each time for the chapter as I found there was not much different between the women when they were talking from their POV. Other than that the narrator was quite good.

This book was good, I enjoyed all the secrets that Ruth and Catherine were keeping from each other, and it is a bit of a different take on domestic suspense as this is between a mother and daughter instead of husband and wife, which is what we normally see. I think that Pekkanen did a good job working with the story and like I said above the manipulation is on point.

Enjoy!!!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of the audiobook

The Audio of this book was excellent.

As for the story, I really enjoyed it.

4 stars

Sarah Pekkanen, best known for her quartet of novels written with Greer Hendricks, ventures out on her own with Gone Tonight. While her novels with Hendricks are often characterized with hidden secrets leading to a series of explosive reveals, Gone Tonight is rooted in building suspense through unreliable narration and the slow reveal of secrets throughout. This switch, paired with the deliciously intricate mother-daughter relationship at the center of the novel, made for an immensely gripping read that had me looking for any time that I could spare to get to the next chapter!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for a fair and honest review!

A thrilling tale which beautifully trades mother and daughter points of view in unraveling the web of lies between them until the truth nearly blows up both their lives. The twists that unroll at the end one after another are great and thought-provoking. Kate Mara is an exceptional narrator.

At no fault of the author, this audiobook stopped playing around 25% in. I hate it because it was really good!

This was my first book by this author and certainly will not be my last. I really liked the storyline and the mother-daughter relationship aspect of it. It had a great flow and kept you wanting to know what was going to happen. It was definitely a great thriller read. It is a book that truly shows that you may not know even the closest people to you in your lives, even though you think you do.

Thank you NetGalley for the gifted copy of this one!
Overall this book was just very average for me. I felt like it was missing a “wow” factor. While I was interested enough to continue listening to the end I was a little bummed I didn’t get that mind blowing ending I craved.
The relationship between mother and daughter was interesting. I couldn’t figure out which side of the story was the accurate one. I feel like some parts dragged and some parts were rushed.
Overall this one was okay!

W.O.W. This book was wonderful. First of all, what a twist from what I thought I was getting into. These characters were so easy to love. I loved all of the Pittsburgh references (my hometown) and just every aspect of this story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

I loved the creativeness and twists within this piece; I continued to listen, even when I was sure I knew where the plot was heading. I would happily read another text from Sarah Pekkanen.