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Vanishing Falls

A Novel

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Vanishing Falls

Written by: Poppy Gee
Narrated by: Caroline Lee
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About this listen

One of CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of the Year!

"This literary thriller paints as vivid a landscape as any book coming out this summer...Gee creates a lush, tantalizing world that readers will want to travel into deeper and deeper." (CrimeReads)

Celia Lily is rich, beautiful, and admired. She’s also missing. And the search for the glamorous socialite is about to expose all the dark, dirty secrets of Vanishing Falls…

Deep within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar House - currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner; his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms - and Celia Lily isn’t in any of them. She has vanished without a trace.…

Joelle Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s simple-minded. 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, 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…

©2020 Poppy Gee (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Amateur Sleuth Detective Fiction Suspense Women's Fiction Marriage Mystery Thriller
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Profile Image for Christina Crawford

Very accomplished literary mystery

Story lived up to reviews and then some! Just an amazing, well writt3n, and well performed mystery in a small seaside town in Tasmania. Vanishing Falls, the village in story, has modern problems, unemployment, and drug addiction. The characters are so cunningly revealed, that the listener is drawn on as bit by bit, secrets, present and past, are revealed . The tension , excitem3nt crank up as e@ch chapter reveals new, startling info. Also interesting is how this talented writer shifts power in relationships. Th3 meek morph into strong characters with a deft subtlety. This was an adventure not to be missed. Hope feisty heroine Joelle reappears soon, as I won’t forget her! Don’t miss this one!

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Profile Image for L.D'anna

Satisfying, but too long

I came to this book through narrator Caroline Lee, as I've enjoyed her work on Liane Moriarty's books, and I'm always on the look-out for new Aussie authors. Poppy Gee's writing style is solid and direct, and easy to listen to. I liked many aspects of Vanishing Falls, including the background detail on colonialism as it affected the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, as well as the historical detail about the state, and the region in which this story is set. My biggest problem with this book is that the author has taken on so much telling that the impact of the murder-mystery is swallowed. The last 3 hours do drag on and I did get very tired of all the characters who needed to be given a voice on every single event. The book would be a lot stronger if an editor had stepped in and provided the author with direction about what to cut to make the essence of the story and its point-of-view stronger. I don't think I'll listen to it a second time, but I don't regret having read it.

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