Books Read: Gone by Leona Deakin

YOUR GIFT IS THE GAME.
DARE TO PLAY?

The police aren’t worried – it’s just a game. But the families are frantic. As psychologist and private detective Dr Augusta Bloom delves into the lives of the missing people, she finds something that binds them all.

And that something makes them very dangerous indeed.

As more disappearances are reported and new birthday cards uncovered, Dr Bloom races to unravel the mystery and find the missing people.

But what if, this time, they are the ones she should fear?

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I'd like to thank Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and Hayley at Transworld for my proof copy of Gone to review.

I really didn't know what to expect when a copy of Gone popped through my letterbox but the blurb alone had me intrigued and I wasn't disappointed. The central character is criminal pscyhologist Dr Augusta Bloom who is asked to get involved in a missing persons case by her business partner Marcus Jameson, an ex MI6 officer. The missing woman Lana is a friend of his sister who has seemingly walked out and left her teenage daughter Jane.

As soon as they start looking into Lana's case they soon realise that this isn't quite a random case as first thought, there seems to be a connection to other strangers who have also gone missing. The one thing that they all had in common was that they had each gone missing on their birthdays after receiving a card inviting them to play a game. How and why they were selected, and where were they now, were the all important questions that needed answering. However it would appear that social media had a large part to play, it would appear that these people were selected and chosen to undergo some pretty criminal activities based on their borderline personalities after filling in the innocent looking quizzes and tests you often see online. 

At first I was a little confused as it appeared as though there were two very different stories being told, both with Augusta Bloom at the heart of it, but the more the book progressed the more it became clear that these two were in fact connected. Just how so we had to be patient and wait for everything to come to light, one part I had figured out but not fully so like Augusta and Marcus I had to wait for everything to play out for the full reveal. 

I've always been fascinated by the human psyche and what makes people tick so the fact that Augusta was a criminal psychologist appealed to me although personally I did find her quite a hard character to warm to. She seemed extremely reserved and closed off, not letting people in not even Marcus who despite working alongside her for a few years doesn't know much about her past. Mind you he's not without his own fair share of skeletons. I really liked this partnership, they really seemed to balance each other out so I was extremely happy to discover that there is going to be another book in the series next year. 

I hate to be cliche but Gone really was a page turner of a read, from about the mid way point I was hooked by the suspense and mind games at play and could not put the book down until it had reached its conclusion. I can't wait for more of hopefully the same in Lost when it is published in April 2020.

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