With unexpected twists, When You Read This I’ll Be Gone by Anne Moose ramps up a kidnapping escapade with a campus tragedy of life-altering consequences.
When You Read This I’ll Be Gone takes us on a gripping book-within-a-book journey. Valerie Hawthorne—an author and college professor—has written a note to her family about the vagaries of her own disappearance. One might even consider the book’s title to be the true opening sentence.
As Valerie recollects the events leading up to the rupture of her marriage and her disappearance, she sucks readers into a meta-narrative that lays the groundwork for Valerie’s published book, which becomes the very book that you are reading.
Through this fascinating narrative approach, the author takes an unfortunately common tragedy of campus rape and re-sensitizes readers to all the reasons why rape survivors find it difficult to come forward about their experiences.
Moose takes Valerie and her kidnapper down the remorseful road of “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” that haunt those whose small actions contributed to someone’s silence. Valerie must come to terms with the fact that she can’t go back in time and fix things—her marriage, her interaction with a student—but she can do something to make sure a victim’s story is told and bring to justice in their absence.
When You Read This I’ll Be Gone is equal parts thrilling and sincerely devoted to its premise, “How far will a person go to hold abusers accountable?” There is some question as to how the title itself factors into the story when it comes full circle. The reader is left unsure who it is for if not about Valerie. Is it coming from the victim of sexual violence, or the father seeking revenge on the men responsible for his child’s undoing? Leaving the question open-ended allows the reader to experience the kind of heartache that can be understood in multitudes.
For readers of Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me and Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, Anne Moose’s When You Read This I’ll Be Gone is full of fast-paced suspense that will have you revisiting the beginning to catch what you missed with renewed insight. Which, if we were to ask Valerie Hawthorne, is the point of storytelling all along.
*This book comes with a Content Warning for campus rape, revenge porn, and suicide
Randall Krzak raises the bar of the thriller genre with Revenge, the action-packed second book in the Bruce and Smith series.
Each day’s trumpet blasts the predawn quiet of the sleeping wagon train, demanding that its migrating families face what’s ahead, whether incredible scenery or mortal danger, in David Fitz-Gerald’s A Grave Every Mile.