Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach

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⭐ 5/5 — Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance: I Came for the Thriller, Stayed for the Ache 💔

Buy it on Amazon: Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach

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⚠️ Trigger Warnings

Child death • Grief • Mental illness • Depression • Suicide and suicidal ideation • Substance use • Sexual content

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🤔 I Thought It Was a Thriller…

So, funny story — I picked this up thinking it was going to be a psychological thriller. I mean, look at that title! Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance totally sounds like something with a twisty ending and an unreliable narrator, right?
Nope. 😅 What I got instead was a beautifully written, gut-punching coming-of-age story about grief. And somehow, I’m not even mad about it.

This book isn’t about plot twists. It’s about grief, guilt, love, and survival — the quiet kind of survival that takes years and reshapes you in ways you can’t even explain.

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💔 The Story (with spoilers)

Sally Holt grows up idolizing her older sister, Kathy. The girls are close, until the day everything changes — when Billy Barnes (Kathy’s boyfriend, and the boy who once saved Sally from drowning) crashes his car with both sisters inside. Kathy dies instantly. Billy is badly injured. Sally survives — physically fine, but emotionally wrecked.

From there, the story stretches across nearly two decades as Sally narrates her life directly to Kathy — as if her sister were still there, listening. She talks about their parents’ grief, her own guilt, and the way her family fractures after the accident. Her mother spirals into depression and turns to a psychic for comfort, while her father withdraws completely.

And Billy? He tries to atone, to make sense of what happened. His guilt is just as deep as Sally’s, and the two of them find each other again — secretly, tenderly, almost inevitably. Their friendship becomes something more. Then, in one of the book’s most heartbreaking turns, Billy reveals he’s joining the seminary to become a friar — his own form of self-punishment.

Years pass. Sally builds a “normal” life — college, a career, an engagement — but the grief never really leaves. It just changes shape. And when Billy reappears years later (no longer a friar, running the family's tree business of all things), the two reunite as a literal storm rages around them. Their kiss in the hurricane feels like catharsis — messy, emotional, imperfect, but so human.

The book ends not with answers, but with acceptance. Kathy will always be gone, but her presence — her memory — lives in every breath Sally takes.

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✍️ My Thoughts

I can’t even explain how visceral this book is. You don’t just read Sally’s emotions — you feel them in your bones. The guilt, the longing, the tiny moments of hope that somehow still sneak in through all the sadness.

Alison Espach writes grief the way a poet writes about love — raw, intimate, unfiltered. I went into this expecting suspense and came out of it with my heart cracked open.

It’s not flashy. It’s not fast-paced. But it’s one of those rare books that just… sticks with you.

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💬 Final Verdict

If you’re looking for a thriller, this isn’t it. But if you’re open to a story that quietly wrecks you in the best way possible, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is absolutely worth it.

⭐ 5 out of 5 stars.
It’s not about the ending — it’s about how every word makes you feel.

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📚 Read This If You Liked:

• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

• Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

• Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai