#BlogTour-‘Then She Vanishes’ by Claire Douglas

About the book…

Thanks to Penguin Random House for the blog tour invite for ‘Then She Vanishes’ by Claire Douglas, available in ebook from 27th June and paperback from 8th August!

Everything changed the night Flora Powell disappeared.

Heather and Jess were best friends – until the night Heather’s sister vanished.

Jess has never forgiven herself for the lie she told that night. Nor has Heather.

But now Heather is accused of an awful crime.

And Jess is forced to return to the sleepy seaside town where they grew up, to ask the question she’s avoided for so long:

What really happened the night Flora disappeared?

‘Then She Vanishes’ is author Claire Douglas’ fifth novel yet it feels as fresh as a debut.It has a killer hook in the mysterious disappearance of Flora Powell, a family racked by tragedy which looks set to continue as Flora’s younger sister,Heather,inexplicably kills 2 strangers before turning the gun on herself.

Notoriously wary around guns and a quiet ,shy girl, Heather, Flora and their mother Margot have lived quietly at Tilbury Manor ,owning the local caravan park and having the kind of life that local girl Jess has always envied. 20 years after Flora’s disappearance drove a immovable wedge in  the teenage girls’ friendship, Jess is back, both as friend and a reporter on the local Herald,trying to work out if this crime has it’s basis in  the past.

Jess’ role as a reporter gives her a professional distance to the deaths of Clive and Deirdre Wilson , and allows her to investigate at the same time as hoping to redeem her journalistic integrity. As the story develops, her and her partner,Rory’s move to Bristol isn’t as clear cut as it seems as she has been unceremoniously sacked from her London job. Her boss in Bristol is determined to use her connection to the family of Flora Powell to get the inside scoop but maybe Jess will get more than her byline on a front page story;redemption and closure are also in sight.

But someone is making it clear that they want her to keep her nose out of the story, Rory is putting pressure on her to make decisions she doesn’t feel ready to and the mystery which has been weighing on her for nearly 20 years could be close to being solved…but as long as Heather remains in  a coma her motives and guilt are at best guessed at.

How far will Jess go to reclaim her past in order to open up a brand new future?

The Powell family were her as good as her own, Jess’ parents being sungularly uninvolved in raising their child so in the course of writing this story, Jess has the chance to reclaim her childhood, right wrongs and move forward.

With so much at stake, Jess has everything she holds dear on the line but shocks are in store that no one in their wildest imaginings could conceive.

As the saying goes, ‘the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’. And here it shows just how easy it is for individuals to fall through cracks and places in the world when people stop looking for them.

A thrilling, plot driven novel of psychological suspense, this is the kind of story which keeps you up all night after promising yourself ‘Just one more chapter…’

There is also a tantalising sneak peek at Claire’s next novel, out in 2020, ‘Just Like The Other Girls’!!

About the author…

Claire Douglas has worked as a journalist for fifteen years writing features for women’s magazines and national newspapers, but she’s dreamed of being a novelist since the age of seven.

She finally got her wish after winning the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award, with her first novel, ‘‘The Sisters’, which was followed by ‘Local Girl Missing’, ‘Last Seen Alive’ and ‘Do Not Disturb’, all Sunday Times bestsellers.

She lives in Bath with her husband and two children.

Twitter @Dougieclaire

@penguinrandom