DNF

Vanishing Falls

Vanishing Falls is one of my few DNF’s of the year, and it’s extremely unusual for me to DNF a mystery at all (I need to know what happens!). This book pretty much failed on all counts, though, and I couldn’t force myself to finish it.

First of all, I picked up this book expecting a Gothic mystery, but that’s not what this is. The book is set in the Tasmanian town of Vanishing Falls. The premise is that wealthy socialite, Celia Lily, disappears one day and that her vanishing exposes secrets within the community. The synopsis also mentions Calendar House, the 52 room home built in the 1800s that the Lilys own.

A mysterious disappearance and a unique, old house sounds like the perfect set-up. Unfortunately Calendar House really plays no role in the story at all and Celia doesn’t even disappear until halfway through the book.

The novel is really about a community plagued by methamphetamine and poverty. Celia’s husband, Jack, is afraid his illicit drug use will become public knowledge, and his best friend, Cliff, spirals into addiction even as his farm goes bankrupt.

Honestly the synopsis on the back of the book felt like it was describing an entirely different novel than what I picked up.

Then were issues with the heroine, Joelle Smithton. Joelle is extremely literal and struggles with nuanced social cues. For example, when Celia goes missing Joelle lists her theories of what might have happened to her while chatting up some women in a grocery store. It’s clearly not appropriate for the conversation the other women intended to have, but they asked Joelle what she thought so she tells them, in too much and too disturbing detail. I read Joelle as being somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum.

My struggle with Joelle was that people around her often manipulate her and treat her unkindly, and she doesn’t always realize it. I felt so hurt and embarrassed on her behalf. When Joelle sees Jack getting high while volunteering at his childrens’ school fundraiser, Celia fears Joelle will tell the police and so she befriends Joelle in order to gain her silence. For Joelle having a friend is a huge deal (other than her husband and a woman they’ve hired to help her, she really has few social connections) and she’s so earnestly excited to have Celia in her life that it broke my heart knowing none of it was real.

CW/TW for animal cruelty

But the final straw for me was that this book contains animal cruelty, including the killings of named pets. I just can’t.

Overall Vanishing Falls is nothing that the cover copy seems to promise. It’s not a Gothic mystery at all. Between the cruelty to Joelle and the animals in the book, it was actually painful for me to read and I had to set it aside.

– Elyse

In this propulsive, page-turning thriller, the dark secrets of a small town in Tasmania are unraveled as a well-known figure goes missing without a trace—perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant and Ruth Ware.

Vanishing Falls, deep in the Tasmanian rainforest, is a remote small town with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its calendar house—an eccentric, lavish mansion. These days, the house is occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner, and his wife, Celia…or at least, it was. For the pretty, popular, and kind Celia has suddenly disappeared.

Joelle Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s stupid. It’s true that Joelle’s brain works a little differently—a legacy of shocking childhood trauma. But Joelle sees far more than most people realize, and remembers details that others cast away. For instance, she knows that Celia’s husband, Jack, has connections to unsavory local characters whom he’s desperate to keep hidden. He’s not the only one in town with something to conceal. Even Joelle’s own husband, Brian, a butcher, is acting suspiciously. While the police flounder, unable to find Celia’s body, Joelle is gradually parsing the truth from the gossip she hears and from the simple gestures and statements that can unwittingly reveal so much.

Just as the water from the falls disappears into the ground, gushing away through subterranean creeks, the secrets in Vanishing Falls are pulsing through the town, about to converge. And when they do, Joelle must summon the courage to reveal what really happened to Celia, even if it means exposing her own past.

With one of the most memorable heroines in fiction, Vanishing Falls captivates from its first page to the shocking, electrifying ending.