Ellen’s Pick of the Week: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

This summer’s blockbuster beach read, I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh felt to me like Gone Girl if Nicholas Sparks had written it. In a shocking act whose repercussions reverberate through the entire novel, Jenna Gray drives up on a curb and hits and kills a young boy as his mother watches in horror. Then she drives away. After she returns home to dump her car, Jenna moves to a remote Welsh seaside resort area to quietly start a new life. The small community warmly embraces her, and she eventually stops having nightmares about the accident.  Her disappearance is so complete and witnesses to her act so few, that the investigation into this crime goes cold until two intrepid detectives decide on the one-year anniversary to reopen the case. And Jenna’s secrets finally catch up with her.

If you’re in the mood for a psychological thriller with some romantic tension, read this book. If you enjoyed Gone Girl, but felt it was just a bit too depressing, give this book a try. But if you have anything else you’re supposed to do, do not even start this one because it sucked me in and I spent an entire day reading because I had to find out what would happen to Jenna. I was not disappointed. Highly recommended.