A clinical psychologist is forced to confront her dark past while uncovering the truth about her mother, all while battling her own mental health struggles.

This psychological thriller had me hooked! I’m a big fan of dual timelines in thrillers—they keep you guessing and ramp up the suspense. This book was an intense, entertaining, and unpredictable ride!

Since She’s Been Gone was an okay read for me. While it didn’t completely blow me away, I really appreciated its thoughtful representation of eating disorders. As someone who doesn’t personally deal with this, it was eye-opening to get a glimpse into how EDs can deeply affect someone’s life. Schwartz handles the topic with care, and it’s clear she wanted to shed light on this often misunderstood struggle.

The story itself had moments of emotional depth, but I found it a bit uneven at times. There were parts that felt truly engaging and raw, but others didn’t connect with me as much as I’d hoped. The characters were well-drawn, though, and I appreciated how Schwartz gave them complexities and layers, especially in how they navigated grief, relationships, and self-acceptance.

If you’re interested in stories that tackle tough topics with sensitivity, this book might resonate more with you. For me, the highlight was gaining a better understanding of eating disorders, which is such an important and often overlooked issue. While it wasn’t a favorite, I can see its value in starting conversations and offering insight.

I totally enjoyed reading this book.
At first, I felt the story started a bit too fast, but the more the story was taking place, the more I savoured it.
I loved how the story was constructed in distinctive parts and I surprisingly enjoyed hearing and learning about the reality of eating disorders.

Plus, I totally fell in love with Beans character.
This is a perfect fast paced book to read in one sitting.

I have been meaning to get to Since She's Been Gone by debut author Sagit Schwartz for quite some time now, and I'm glad I finally did! This had a nonstop fast-paced plot with plenty of reveals as well as a mysterious atmosphere the entire way through. I was glad the triggers were listed at the beginning of the book (Schwartz being a psychotherapist that isn't a surprise), and if you have triggers, I would definitely recommend checking them out ahead of time. I think I loved Lippman's blurb for this book the most, and the author certainly set her thriller apart from all the others out there. The focus on mental health and addiction is a huge aspect of the storyline, and it is approached with great care and respect.

The audiobook is narrated by Ann Sprinkle who is a new-to-me narrator, and I thought she did just an amazing job. She managed to harness all of the pain and emotions in the characters, especially Beatrice (Beans), and listening to her got me all emotional too. While I wasn't blown away like most readers were, I found this to be an incredibly solid debut with a lot of heart, twists, and a complex plotline. I still can't get over how much I learned about eating disorders from reading Since She's Been Gone, and if you want a smart and unique thriller that will instantly hook you, this is your gal!

I enjoyed this compelling and chilling story that centers around a young woman's eating disorder triggered by her mother's death.

Beatrice "Beans" lost her mother at fifteen and has struggled with an eating disorder ever since. Now, working as a clinical psychologist, a new patient tells her that her mother is alive and may be in danger. This sets off a mystery that involves not only Beans trying to find the truth about her mother but also a dive into the opioid epidemic.

This is a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller. It is told through dual timelines, both of which I found equally intriguing.

I will caution readers that this is a raw and emotional read, and the subjects of eating disorders, addiction, and death are discussed in depth but handled with respect and compassion.


Thank you, @crookedlanebooks, for this gifted ebook.

A gripping dual timeline thriller with a twist of mental health. I was kept guessing until the very end. Some twists felt predictable, but overall it was a riveting read.
Many thanks to Crooked Lane Books and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

In my opinion, this book was phenomenal!! I found the eating disorder (ED) rep to be really sad and interesting. I loved how Sagit gave us a wealth of information about ED while telling her story. This story definitely takes you on an unexpected emotional, yet beautiful ride!! I highly recommend this book!!

I read this one for our book club, Matzah Book Soup, and it was a total hit! Everyone loved and appreciated how the author woven super important themes into the book. It really helped us have a deep and meaningful conversation. I would check the CW/TW on this one first, but definitely recommend it. It's a super fast paced read too, and I loved the dual-timeline.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Since She's Been Gone by Sagit Schwartz.

I'll be honest, what I mostly got out of this book were the protagonists devastating experiences with disordered eating. A lot of what happened amongst that, I just couldn't get into it. And the ending especially just felt too little, too late.

CONTENT WARNING: eating disorder, death of a parent, self-harm, stalking, cancer, miscarriage, mention of addiction, mention of death of a child

This book came across my radar a while before it came out, and I was intrigued right away. At first, I discovered it through a Jewish bookstagrammer’s post about upcoming books by Jewish authors, but it stood out because there aren’t as many mystery/thriller books that I see. Naturally, I couldn’t pass up the chance to read this one, although I was a bit nervous about the mental health elements and how they would be presented. By the end of the book, I was blown away by this debut.

The characters were great. Beatrice ‘Beans’ Bennett was an easy character to empathize with—she went through a chain of very difficult experiences in her adolescence and early adulthood, where her mother’s death led to her life feeling out of control to her, and the reader gets to see this side of Beans through flashbacks of her coping with these feelings by restricting her food until she has slowly developed an eating disorder.And it becomes serious very quickly. We get a raw, unfiltered view of the thoughts that go through the head of a person with an active eating disorder. Her recovery is a difficult one, and she’s faced with so many challenges.

I looked forward the most to the chapters with Beans in the present day. At 41, she is a licensed psychotherapist, and has done some work on herself. She’s in recovery from her eating disorder, which takes daily focus and attention. And when she receives shocking news about the mother she thought she lost decades ago, it threatens to cause her to spiral. As more secrets are revealed, much of the progress Beans has made starts to unravel. She begins to struggle with eating disordered thoughts in a voice that she is familiar with, and refers to as ED. The more information that Beans discovers, the more danger she is in, and the more she is racing against her eating disorder.

A little digging into the background of the patient who drops the bombshell on Beans reveals that she’s connected to this family who is behind a huge Pharma company that’s getting sued for misrepresenting their drug as less addictive when they knew that was a lie. (Sound familier *cough OxyContin cough*) And then, the plot thickens when further digging reveals that her mother had a connection to the same family and the same pharmaceutical drugs before Beans was born. So now she’s in danger from the family who wants to keep her quiet about what she might find out, and the stress from that is making the eating disorder worse.

The plot is relatively even-paced, although it does speed up quite a bit near the end, although that’s to be expected. All the tension and mystery and suspense that has been building up gets resolved at a faster pace, but it didn’t feel rushed. There was one part of the story that did feel a bit over the top, but other than that, I genuinely enjoyed the story. The dual timeline mysteries kept me hooked on both of them, while I normally tend to like one timeline over the other. But I think what won me over the most about this book and this author is the fact that Schwartz is a licensed psychotherapist, and does absolute justice as to what therapy is like, has experience with eating disorders, and can translate her lived experiences into her written fiction. Overall, this was a wonderful job, especially for a debut, and I’m incredibly impressed. I’ll absolutely be keeping an eye out for whatever Schwartz puts out in the future!

Thank you Netgalley. I loved this book!
The story was amazing and kept me on my toes. This was one I couldn't put down until I knew the truth. Fabulous and exciting book. Highly recommend

This book sucked me in chapter by chapter. It kept getting better and better.
It starts off with a BANG when Beatrice "Beans" Bennett gets a visit from a mysterious woman who claims her mother who was killed in a hit and run accident when Beans was 15 is still alive and needs her help immediately. Beans doesn't know what to think but she has to find the truth so she starts digging. The book is utterly unputdownable.
It's a tragic story of a young girl who had a life threatening illness of anorexia due to losing her mom. It is how her life was shaped by this tragic event and what she does with the possibility that it all could have been a lie. What an incredible debut. BRAVO!

I just finished Since she’s been gone by Sagit Schwartz and here is my review.

Beatrice “Beans” Bennett is called into work early. As a psychologist, sometimes you have to open up early to see patients. When she invites the woman into her office, she doesn’t want to sit and talk. She wants to warn Beans that her mother, the woman she thought died when she was 15, is still alive and is in imminent danger. Then she flees.

Bringing the death of her mother back to the forefront of her mind has Beans slipping back into a past she left behind, an eating disorder that could have killed her had she not overcome it but she has to know whether the woman is telling the truth.

The more she digs, the more she learns why her mother may have gone into hiding and she did it to protect her family. The things she learned, the things her mother lived through all stems from an opioid crisis from a pharma company that will do anything to keep their secrets buried and they don’t care who they have to silence to do it.


What an excellent book. It was well written, clever and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I really enjoyed the build up and the conclusion. I haven’t read any books with anorexia in them before but I would assume the author did their research on it as it played a pretty large role in the plot.

I liked Beans. She had been through hell and you could feel her need for answers and the sadness that rippled from the pages. The more we learned about her mothers past, the more it all made sense and it was well done. I did feel the ending was a bit rushed and seemed a bit convenient at the end but I’m a sucker for HEA so I could overlook that.

Definitely worth the read.

4 stars. Thank you @netgalley and @crookedlanebooks for my gifted copy. Out now!!

For Beatrice, "Bean," losing a mom at the age of 10 was difficult and led to some very hard years ahead for her. After overcoming a very serious eating disorder (ED), she became a therapist to help those like her. Until one day a woman appears in her office stating that Bean's mom isn't really dead and that she is in trouble. This sends Bean into a deep dive trying finding out things about her mom's past that she had no idea about, and confronting that past and her own demons head on.

This book was very much all about the eating disorder and the ramifications of that. Everything seemed to return to ED, shedding much light on the complications surrounding eating disorders. There was the element of the mystery around her mother and trying to play detective in finding out those details at any cost, even if meaning it puts her life and those around her in danger, because those details are taking on a massive pharmaceutical company and things they have hidden in the past.

I did find the entire book very interesting and at times a wee bit far fetched. It was an easy read with a whole lot of details and many characters. The concept of a a dead mother actually being alive and finding out the reasons behind it was a good one, but in my opinion, the whole ED issue overtook the book. Overall, good read and I hope that you give it a try.

This unusual suspense took me on an emotional ride while reading it. It is a debut novel that the author used her professional experience to implement her knowledge of eating disorders, sprinkled with a mystery, twists, and turns that kept me turning pages. I'm looking forward to reading her future books too.

This was an average read.for me. This novel primarily focuses on the eating disorder topic with a little bit of mystery sprinkled in. I felt like there wasn't a balance between the two topics. I wanted more mystery. However It's a well written story that offers valuable insights on eating disorders and mental health.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the E-ARC. And to Highbridge Audio for the ALC.

All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.

If you’re in the mood for a dual timeline, suspenseful thriller with plenty of twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat, you’re going to want to check this one out.

I binged it in a day and was wholly invested in both the main character’s search for the truth about her mother, as well as the emotional deep dive into her own dark past that this search triggers.

This was such an impressive debut and I look forward to reading more from Sagit Schwartz!

Beatrice , a practicing psychologist, gets a visit from a strange woman that gives her cryptic message alluding to the fact that her deceased mother might be alive. This sets Beatrice on a wild and dangerous path to learn the truth about her painful past.

This is written in dual timelines. The present, as Beatrice uncovers secrets about her mother, and Beatrice’s teen years when she was institutionalized for an eating disorder.

This is a book that will keep you reading late into night. Just one more chapter …

And I learned so much about ED. It felt like I was going through it with Beatrice.

If you are a fan of psychological thrillers I highly recommend this one!

I enjoyed this book until about halfway in, and then unfortunately, my interest declined. I felt like the plot really took a dip once she travelled to try and seek out what happened to her mom. I liked the past - present chapters because Beans’ past really helped to set up her character and why she is the way she is. The way that the story was told though, it just unfortunately didn’t hold my interest so I couldn’t care about the end of the story to see what happened. It stopped feeling like a thriller to me.
This aside, of course I will read whatever she puts out next and support this Jewish author.

Beatrice lost her mother when she was 15. She developed an ED and had to go to rehab. She is a psychologist and one day a "patient" tells Beatrice that her mother is still alive. This sets her on a path to find out the truth she didn't know about someone she loved so much.

There are some very heavy subject matters here with opioid addiction, eating disorder, and death of a parent but it was so captivating throughout this read.

I appreciate the author showing that especially, with an eating disorder, the person is never "cured". They still struggle daily to keep the dark thoughts at bay. We see Beatrice struggle with this in her present day.

Wow, I can't believe this is a debut.