Gone Before Goodbye

Gone Before Goodbye is an appropriate title for a book that you will forget about before you finish it. If you even can finish it.

A lot of excessive detail. A lot of medical jargon. A lot of plot points. The only thing I
liked was the subplot related to an AI chatbot. I would have read an entire book just about that. I didn’t care for everything else.

It was fitting that I read this book right after I recently finished Remain by Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan. Both books shared many similarities. Both were thriller novels co written by actors/filmmakers. Both dealt with the theme of grief. Remain succeeded a little better because it was simple and focused. Gone Before Goodbye failed because it was overly complex and scattered.

I was genuinely surprised at how bad this was. Which is sad because it will still receive blind praise because of Reese Witherspoon. I cannot recommend this book. Sorry. Maybe the inevitable movie adaptation will be better.

I really loved this book. Sad, lots of suspense and unexpected twists. Kept me at the edge of my seat, and it was hard to put down.

Lots of unexpected twists typical of a Harlan Coben read.

Good mystery that keeps you guessing.

“You fly into Dubai for sketchy reasons. On your first night here, you, a single American woman in her forties, go to a nightclub alone. You claim you saw the stabbing of a rich man who no one else saw, who you happened to bump into and whose house you happen to have just been staying in before you arrived—and this all happened right after you met with his mistress at the same club…Do I need to go on?” This is the premise for Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon’s bestselling debut and propulsive thriller Gone Before Goodbye. “They wanted the best plastic surgeon money could buy. Maggie needed money and wanted to get back in the game somehow.” The bargaining chip: two patients, two surgeries–cosmetic surgeries. “The client’s mistress would be getting breast augmentation. And the client himself wanted some facial work.” The vetting: five million dollars deposited into her account at Merrill for taking the meeting. Another five million dollars when she finishes the job. But the über rich seek excellent medical care in the most discreet and clandestine manner possible. And they want Maggie McCabe. “Not the oligarch…His mistress. A woman named Nadia. She’s the one who specifically requested Maggie McCabe and only Maggie McCabe.” “She looks down at Oleg’s vacant chest cavity. Where there should be a heart, there is nothing but a yawning, bloodless void. It is a sight to behold, this threshold between death and life, between an ending and a beginning, between emptiness and hope. This chest is the emptiest of vessels and a promise waiting to be fulfilled…Her patient is a man with no heart, figuratively and, for the moment, literally. He is also, perhaps figuratively and literally, dead. Only she can bring him back to life. What would happen if she didn’t?” “A novel filled with global medical intrigue and massive corruption, all centered around a woman whose superpower is her surgical prowess,” literary surgeons Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben breathe Maggie McCabe to life with their “ability to shape an idea into a fully fleshed-out, page-turning thriller.” But who is the man in a baseball cap? Will death be avenged? Gone Before Goodbye demands a return!