The perfect twisty thriller for the end of October

Book review: The Vanishing Year, by Kate Moretti. Published in 2016 by Titan Books.

He smelled nice. Like soap and aftershave. He wore a wedding ring. I wondered if his wife was as young as him. Perhaps pregnant with their first child, round and glowing… He probably rubbed her tired feet at night, massaged cocoa butter into her belly. She surely had many pairs of jeans that fit her and that she washed in a machine, swirling with fresh Tide and fabric softener. She’d never done heroin. Or sold drugs in the presence of children.

The Vanishing Year

Where to start when trying to summarise the plot of The Vanishing Year without giving anything away… I feel like this is going to be a struggle!

Hilary’s adoptive mother, Evelyn, has just died and she needs to cover the cost of the funeral and burial; she seeks help from Evelyn’s off-and-on partner Mick. With him, Hilary quickly plunges into San Francisco’s dark world of drugs and violence, and her life as a college student with a happy future ahead of her quickly disappears. When she sees the chance to escape; she takes it.

The plot then fast forwards to her new life in New York, where she is now going by the name Zoe, married to wealthy banker, Henry. She suddenly has a life full of luxury away from all the poverty and hardship, but Zoe can’t stop thinking about her biological and adoptive mothers, and the life she left behind.

Both she and Henry have pasts they don’t talk about, choosing instead to live in a present-moment bubble, but when Zoe’s past starts to catch up with her new life, she has to decide who she can turn to for help.

When I emerge into the hallway, he gasps. If there is a script for this movie, this moment in my life, it would have been written exactly as it played out. My heart hammers and my hands shake and I know in that instant, like the sappiest of romance movies, that this man will change my life.

The Vanishing Year

This is a thriller that will keep you up at night to find out what happens next. The pace is relentless from the drug-fuelled streets of San Francisco to the penthouses and charity galas in New York, I felt Zoe was a believable and compelling protagonist. The sense of danger is ever-present as she finds herself increasingly isolated and scared, trying to work out who she can trust.

I’m thirty years old and I’m not familiar with contemporary pop music. Lydia would be appalled. Our apartment in Hoboken was never quiet, always bursting with underground punk, hard-core rock, and then sometimes just blasting the latest Pink song. Lydia lived her life in music. Loud, harsh, thrumming beats for Saturdays and soft jazz for Sunday hangovers. The past year of my life has been outlined in shades of silence.  

The Vanishing Year

For once I did actually guess the twist of this novel (and yes, I am proud of myself), but it didn’t dampen my enjoyment of the book. I thought it was packed full of intricate details and a serious amount of threatening energy. Good for anyone who enjoys a twisty thriller where you don’t know who to trust.