Review: ‘The Three Beths’ by Jeff Abbott ⭐⭐⭐.5

SYNOPSIS:

From multi-million-selling writer Jeff Abbott comes an intense and gripping new psychological thriller about a daughter’s desperate search for her mother – when she discovers two women with the same name are also missing. 

My mum would never leave me. 

This has been Mariah Dunning’s motto. So when she glimpses her mother – who’s been missing the past year – Mariah’s conviction becomes stronger than ever. Or is she losing her mind? 

An unlikely coincidence? 

When Beth Dunning disappeared without a trace, suspicion for her murder immediately fell upon Mariah’s father. Until Mariah stumbles upon two other recent disappearances. And all three women had the same name: Beth.

Or a sinister connection? 

Mariah would give anything to find out what happened to be mother and clear her father’s name. But the truth may be more devastating than she ever imagined… 

REVIEW:

“You never knew what small-seeming choice in your life could have a massive ripple effect.”

This was a readable thriller with short chapters that helped keep the steady pace and tension. At the start I had so many questions: where is Beth? Who was the woman Mariah saw at the mall? Why does her father seem so reluctant to have her asking questions and trying to find answers? As time went on there were more questions waiting to be answered… 

Mariah was a character I found easy to like. I can’t imagine the grief of having your mother vanish and feeling like the police aren’t looking for her because they’ve made up their minds that your father is guilty. Mariah’s desperation to find her mother and amateur detective work was exactly what I would want to do in her position, especially after being told of a possible link to another missing women that the police instantly dismissed. I liked that her father, Craig, was ambiguous and you were never sure if you could trust him. I had my predictions and I won’t go into them or if they were right to avoid spoilers, but I liked that I would waver in my thoughts about his possible involvement and how honest he was being. His strong desire to protect Mariah was exactly as you’d expect from any father and made some of his more questionable choices understandable. I really liked Sharon’s character although I didn’t really trust her and found her strange. Characters like that can be fun to read though and Sharon certainly added a lot to the story for me, especially the dynamic between her and Mariah. 

The decision by the author to not include flashbacks narrated by the women themselves added to the mystery. It meant our knowledge of them was coloured by the lense through which others saw them but I liked how the author showed us that people can be many different things depending on who you talk to. No person is one dimensional. 

This twisty thriller didn’t blow me away but it was a fun and enjoyable read. I found that the pace and tension wavered and I wasn’t kept gripped as I had been at the beginning, but I never felt bored or tempted to stop reading. By about half way through I thought I knew how this was going to play out and while it was predictable in some ways, other twists still took me by surprise right until the final pages. 

Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group UK and Jeff Abbott for the chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Out today.