Ever since 2017, world-renowned actress Reese Witherspoon has led Reese’s Book Club, a celebrity book club championing female authors. Some of the book club’s past picks include Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life, R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface, Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts and dozens more critically-acclaimed, influential novels. Thus, as a book lover, I was naturally excited to dive in when I heard Reese Witherspoon had just released her own new thriller novel, Gone Before Goodbye.
On Oct. 14, Witherspoon published her first adult novel, a collaboration with best-selling thriller and suspense author Harlan Coben. Gone Before Goodbye tells the story of former Army surgeon Maggie McCabe, who lost her medical license after a series of tragic events and has fallen into disgrace. When a former mentor of hers offers her a lucrative yet secretive overseas job, she takes it, eager to help her sister out of debt. However, when she arrives at the house of a wealthy Russian oligarch, storylines stop adding up and warning signs appear, leading to her escape and journey to discover the truth behind her placement in this job, her friend’s disappearance and the tragedies that led to the downfall of her career.
The book’s pacing begins slow; although Maggie keeps alluding to some tragic backstory, there seems to be no clear direction for the plot. It isn’t until an hour into the 11-hour audiobook that the audience finally understands why Maggie lost her medical license, and it isn’t until more than halfway through the book that the actual conflict is revealed, and Maggie can start solving it. I’m no stranger to slow burns, but Gone Before Goodbye was slow with no climax to anticipate. There was so much potential for suspenseful build-ups and exciting plot twists, but each reveal came quickly and was over just as suddenly. Ultimately, Gone Before Goodbye fell flat.
Just like the plot development, the writing felt poor, switching between long chunks of uninterrupted dialogue to rambling, unnecessary descriptions. Plot reveals were done over the course of a couple paragraphs, then immediately dropped for the next storyline. This isn’t to say, however, that I don’t think Witherspoon is a good writer. As this was her debut in the adult fiction world, I was by no means expecting a perfect novel. Though, I would have expected more from Coben, as he is well-versed in writing thriller novels.
Gone Before Goodbye may be the epitome of “tell, don’t show,” but I did find its content to be interesting. After Maggie accepts the overseas surgery, she soon realizes that her being there is no accident, and these seeming strangers are, in fact, deeply entangled in Maggie’s relationship with her deceased husband and former company. Maggie’s interactions with these characters reveal what I think is the book’s main topic: a discussion on grief and corruption. As a reader, I was just as shocked as Maggie was when the plotlines involving organ trafficking and sabotage were introduced — Witherspoon and Coben did a good job of psychologically manipulating characters and readers, so much so that I didn’t realize Maggie’s husband was dead until she outright mentioned it.
Though merely a subplot of the book, I was fascinated by how Witherspoon and Coben portrayed Maggie’s relationship with her late husband Marc and how she coped with the grief of losing him. Maggie’s conversations with Marc at the beginning of the novel are later revealed to just be conversations between her and an advanced AI “griefbot,” built by Maggie’s sister to replicate Marc’s physical, mental and social likeness as closely as possible. Maggie relies on this griefbot for advice and support until the very end of the story when she deletes it, symbolically accepting Marc’s passing.
When I finished the book, I was initially dissatisfied, wondering where the thrill was. However, after sitting with it for a while, I realized that Gone Before Goodbye actually delivered a fresh, unique take on suspense novels. I went in with no knowledge of the plot, expecting a typical murder mystery or missing persons case. The medical context distinguished it from most other mainstream thrillers, and once the plot picked up about halfway through the book, I stayed interested in Witherspoon and Coben’s unconventional take on the genre.
I appreciated Witherspoon and Coben’s efforts to explore grief and corruption in the novel. However, it felt largely underdeveloped and surface-level, leaving me with a resounding feeling of disappointment. Despite all the flaws in the writing and plot development, Gone Before Goodbye had a unique plot and expanded the thriller genre beyond the usual. I could feel Coben’s influential hand guiding the story, and I have faith that should she choose to continue in the adult fiction genre, Witherspoon’s next novels will only improve.
Katherine Winton is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at kgw45@cornell.edu.
