Review: Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen

Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided both the audio and print  ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This was an interesting domestic thriller.  It follows mother and daughter Ruth and Catherine through their daily lives.  As we get to know them it quickly becomes clear that Ruth is hiding something.  Ruth has always been closed off about her past, and as Catherine is ready to spread her wings as a new college graduate and start her career as a nurse she is more curious than ever about her mom's past.  What she doesn't know is that Ruth has carefully cultivated a life to protect herself and Catherine from the past that she is so desperately hiding from.  She will do anything to keep Catherine close until she is 100% sure she will be safe from people and events that happened in her past.  As the book unfolds we find out the lengths that Ruth is willing to go to to protect her daughter, and how far her daughter is willing to go to find the truth about her mother.

There were some situations that were a bit "unbelievable".  I thought it was pretty unrealistic that Catherine wasn't able to figure out her mother's ruse a little more quickly, but overall the storyline was interesting.  There were some good twists and turns, but I didn't find this to have high level of suspense.  This may have some triggering content for some readers.  This is an interesting story of the mother daughter relationship as well as nature vs nature.  

As for the audio narration, I thought the narrator did a good job.   I would have liked a bit more differentiation between Ruth's voice and Catherine's voice as the book is told from both of their perspectives.  It was a bit difficult to tell which woman was at the center of the chapter with only one voice telling the story.   I feel the audiobook would have benefitted from a 2nd narrator or if Mara would have been able to voice once of the characters a bit differently.

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