Gone by Lisa McMann

Gone by Lisa McMann

Summary

Janie thought she knew what her future held. And she thought she’d made her peace with it. But she can’t handle dragging Cabel down with her.

She knows he will stay with her, despite what she sees in his dreams. He’s amazing. And she’s a train wreck. Janie sees only one way to give him the life he deserves: She has to disappear. And it’s going to kill them both.

Then a stranger enters her life — and everything unravels. The future Janie once faced now has an ominous twist, and her choices are more dire than she’d ever thought possible. She alone must decide between the lesser of two evils. And time is running out....



Review

Lisa McMann finished the Wake Series on a strong note. It was my favorite of the three books. It is the least plot-driven of the books. There are no assignments for Cabel and Janie to complete. The only assignment in this book is for Janie to discover herself - both how to grapple with her "gift" of dream-catching, how to handle her troubled mother, and whether and how to have a relationship with Cabel. Essentially, the book is about Janie growing up very quickly.

The plot of the book revolves around Janie's father. Janie receives a cryptic phone call from her friend Carrie that her mother is screaming in the yard and is taken to the hospital. Janie rushes to the hospital expecting her mother to be seriously ill or just drunk as usual. Instead she finds her mother in a room with her father, a man she's never met. He has some unexplainable brain trauma and is in a coma. To Janie's surprise, she gets sucked into her father's dreams, which are more challenging than any she's experienced thus far.

Janie learns more and more about her father, which makes her question her own decisions and her relationship with Cabel. Cabel is Janie's rock, but Janie is tortured over being a burden and Cabel is subconsciously troubled over his role as her support.

Even though there was no real "action" to this book, I loved how I got to experience the pressures and difficult choices with which Janie is faced. It was very thought-provoking - my emotions shifted between pain and empathy and ultimately satisfaction.

Like the other two, Lisa's prose is very stark. Her short sentences and to-the-point language adds to the grittiness and tension of the book. It definitely pulls you in. It's also a quick read - I finished it in an hour, although my rush to get to the end certainly sacrificed some of the intricacies of the text. Regardless, it was a very enjoyable book.

Rating: 4 / 5