The Vanished

De: Cara Putman

Narrado por: Lauren Pedersen

Janae Simmons left the small town of Kedgewick, Virginia, ten years ago to pursue her legal career and never looked back—until a professional mistake leads her to her grandmother's historic carriage house and to the town where her past threatens to find her. The streets echo with her grandfather's sterling reputation, one that conflicts with fresh questions that claw at Janae, launching her on a reluctant journey to unearth his secrets. When her new job at a local law firm doesn't live up to expectations, she wonders if coming home was the right decision.

Carter Montgomery starts his art preservation career with the only job he can get—director at the Elliott Museum of Art. At least Kedgewick is a nice enough town to provide him and his nephew with a safe place to grieve the loss of Carter's sister. But Carter's calm days disappear when an elderly woman claims two paintings in the museum's collection were stolen from her family during WWII.

Carter enlists Janae's help to unravel the legal labyrinth of art ownership, and the peaceful facade of Kedgewick morphs into a hotbed of secrets. When an attorney turns up dead and Janae uncovers another painting, what began as a simple legal issue spirals into a race against time. As the web of intrigue tightens, the duo must confront a looming question: What dark truths lie beneath the surface, waiting to be exposed?

©2024 Cara C. Putman (P)2024 Tantor

Narrator could be a bit too robotic sounding at times

This was a good book. It had a good intermingling of mysteries. I do feel like it dragged on and the characters were a bit annoying in their inability to see things right before them or to foresee coming issues. While the storyline itself seemed to drag in places, the ending seemed too abrupt. Everything was brought together but it felt like it was just thrown in there without much emotion to say the book ended. The narrator did a good job distinguishing voices, but her robotic reading at times took away from the character development and emotions. Her narration ended up making a lot of the book feel very choppy.

Would take off 2 stars for narrator alone

Narrator was terrible! So robotic.
Plot left much to be desired. Story was generally okay but important events seemed to get little to no coverage while unimportant events droned on for pages at a time. The ending came out of nowhere! Too tightly resolved with a little bow on top.