He's Gone by Deb Caletti

“What do you think happened to your husband, Mrs. Keller?”

 

The Sunday morning starts like any other, aside from the slight hangover. Dani Keller wakes up on her Seattle houseboat, a headache building behind her eyes from the wine she drank at a party the night before. But on this particular Sunday morning, she’s surprised to see that her husband, Ian, is not home. As the hours pass, Dani fills her day with small things. But still, Ian does not return. Irritation shifts to worry, worry slides almost imperceptibly into panic. And then, like a relentless blackness, the terrible realization hits Dani: He’s gone.

 

As the police work methodically through all the logical explanations—he’s hurt, he’s run off, he’s been killed—Dani searches frantically for a clue as to whether Ian is in fact dead or alive. And, slowly, she unpacks their relationship, holding each moment up to the light: from its intense, adulterous beginning, to the grandeur of their new love, to the difficulties of forever. She examines all the sins she can—and cannot—remember. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, turning over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth—about herself, her husband, and their lives together.

 

 

I will come right out and say it.  I did not like this book. 

 

For starters when it was voted for our next read in my book club I didn't vote for it, just didn't' like the way it sounded.  But like I always do I went into it with an open mind because half the books I read I don't want to and end up loving them.

 

This book is written in first person, I usually love first person books.  But we spend over 75% of the book inside Dani's head.  Her memories of her first marriage, the affair and the second marriage with Ian.  There were long sections between when one character spoke and Dani replied.  Half the time I lost the thread of the conversation.

 

The write up makes it sound like there will be something exciting going on in regards to the missing husband.  Cop type stuff.  But there is hardly any of that and Dani doesn't really ponder what the police are doing.  There is absolutely no excitement or tension in this book just pages and pages of Dani's thoughts. 

 

When we finally do get to what happened to Ian it is insignificant and you don't really care because he hasn't been painted in the best of lights.  Heck, all the characters are flawed to the point where you can't understand why Dani had anything to do with them.

 

My advice, skip this one.  There are too many good books written about the same type of thing to waste your time stuck inside Dani's head.

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