In summer 1994, 16-year-old Flora Powell vanishes like smoke from her coastal English village, and her mother, sister Heather, and Heather's best friend, Jess, must carry on without answers. Twenty-five years later, Jess is again looking for answers when happily married new mom Heather walks into a stranger's house and allegedly murders two people in cold blood. With a 75,000-copy paperback and 25,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Sixteen-year-old Flora Powell became "the phantom in the room," floating between her mother, Margot, and her sister, Heather, after she vanished one summer evening in 1994. Heather's best friend, Jess, still struggles with her recollections of that night. Eighteen years later, Heather waltzes into a someone's house and allegedly shoots its two inhabitants. Then she returns home and botches a suicide attempt that leaves her in a coma. Jess, now a reporter, is pressured by her editor to get the scoop, creating a dilemma for her that deepens as she uncovers more and more unsettling details of both long-past and recent events. The bonds of mothers, good and bad, and their children, and of siblings and friends, along with the weight of guilt and loss, at times outweigh the elements of suspense here. Gillian Flynn fans and devotees of the "girls gone missing" genre would enjoy the well-framed narrative of twists and turns, especially the final revelation; but some readers may find that the author, in her fifth stand-alone, strains credulity.