Review: The Vanishing Year

The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite thrillers so far this year! Zoe Whittaker left her life in California behind five years ago to escape retribution for testifying at a trial. Now, in the present day, she's married to a wealthy husband and living the life her and her adopted mother had always dreamed about. That is, until one day her past starts catching up with her.

I hate hate hate thrillers were the main character is deliberately stupid. Usually this helps keep the reader uniformed, but is still thoroughly irritating to me as a reader, I just want to grab the character by the shoulders and shake them. Luckily, Zoe is far from stupid for the most part. She's intuitive and capable of figuring her own life out. Perhaps a little too trusting, but that would be where the plot comes in. The book moves forward at a steady clip throwing small life changing secrets in just when you're craving something more.

I also really hate when an author purposely holds back the past to save up for the big reveal (Liane Moriarty's Truly Madly Guilty was very, ahem, guilty of this). All this does is make me frustrated and I end up skim reading until I find out whatever this huge super dark secret is that nobody is supposed to know, and it better be juicy. Again, luckily Kate Moretti doesn't play such games. You immediately are let in Zoe's past and why she was forced to leave California, setting up the rest of the book very nicely. By the end Moretti's given you enough to predict the ending. That's ok, though, because it was still fast paced enough to keep me on the edge of my seat on the subway.

Thanks NetGalley for a copy to review!

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