Since She Went Away - Review and Excerpt

Idgie Says:
This is a fascinating story of a single mother trying to be what she needs to be with her teenage boy, show understanding and leniency while at the same time fearing letting him loose after her friend mysteriously disappears one night.  What's loose in the world that might get her boy too?  

He remains safe, but his sorta/kinda/maybe girlfriend then also disappears, after he spies her acting incredibly afraid of her father, along with an action that seems "not right" between the two of them.

Plenty of who's and what's and where's in this story.  Side stories within the pages of the main story. I cannot say much more without giving away plot.

Click HERE for an excerpt.
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A master of the small-town, layered thriller, bestselling author David Bell has crafted some of the smartest, most suspenseful novels, including Somebody I Used to Know and Forgotten Girl. SINCE SHE WENT AWAY (NAL Trade Paperback Original; June 21, 2016; ISBN:  978-0-451-47421-6; $15.00), his latest thriller that Publishers Weekly has already called “tantalizing.”  

When Jenna Barton received the text message from her lifelong best friend, Celia Walters, with a single request—‘Want to meet in the park at 12?’—she jumped at the chance to re-live some old high school fun. Jenna was running late to meet Celia that night. But Celia never arrived—and hasn’t been seen since.
Now, three months later, the only piece of evidence in Celia’s disappearance is a lone diamond earring found where Celia and Jenna were planning to meet. The media has descended upon their small Kentucky town, dubbing Celia “The Diamond Mom,” and the police are no closer to finding out what happened since that unfortunate evening. It’s as if Celia disappeared into thin air. And Jenna, racked with guilt and hounded by a sensationalistic cable news personality, spends her down time obsessively scouring online message boards devoted to missing persons cases. No one is closer to finding Celia, and neither is Jenna closer to letting go of that horrible night.
But when Jenna’s son Jared’s new girlfriend—who suddenly arrived to town with secrets of her own—also disappears, Jenna wonders if the two cases are connected and tries unwind the tangled truth behind this latest tragedy and what happened to Celia. As long-buried secrets finally come to light, she discovers how a few simple lies can completely shatter lives.