No Time For Goodbye

Author/Guide: Linwood Barclay

Why a Booktrail?

1983: What do you do when you wake up and find your entire family has disappeared?

ISBN: 978-1409180852
Genre: Suspense, Thriller

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What you need to know before your trail

On the morning she will never forget, suburban teenager Cynthia Archer awakes with a nasty hangover and a feeling she is going to have an even nastier confrontation with her mom and dad. But when she leaves her bedroom, she discovers the house is empty, with no sign of her parents or younger brother Todd. In the blink of an eye, without any explanation, her family has simply disappeared.

Twenty-five years later Cynthia is still haunted by unanswered questions. Were her family murdered? If so, why was she spared? And if they’re alive, why did they abandon her in such a cruel way? Now married with a daughter of her own, Cynthia fears that her new family will be taken from her just as her first one was. And so she agrees to take part in a TV documentary revisiting the case, in the hope that somebody somewhere will remember something – or even that her father, mother or brother might finally reach out to her . . .

Then a letter arrives which makes no sense and yet chills Cynthia to the core. And soon she begins to realise that stirring up the past could be the worst mistake she has ever made . . .

Locations

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Travel Guide

Connecticut and NY state

This story may start in Milford CT, but it goes across country as the trail and quest to find out what happened to Cynthia’s family goes ahead. Most of the book does take place in Milford but to mention too many places on the map would give the game away so the map is deliberately vague.

What’s in Milford however?

Milford

A town which used to be known for shipbuilding, farming and oystering, but later it became a beach resort for residents of New Haven and the surrounding area.

To commemorate its milling history there is a “Memorial Bridge” (a “stone bridge and tower commemorating the town’s history and founders”)was built at the site of the last mill over the Wepawaug after it closed in 1894

Youngstown

The rest of the novel moves from CT to NY and back again and via some very interesting places on route in search of the truth. this is a novel which moves from one place to another, to one small village or town to another in the search for anyone who might have known Cynthia’s family.

It’s a frightening thought, and one, where you’re travelling from one place to another, where you might end up when you finally find the truth. Many scenes are on the road, in a car, in someone’s house…

No Time for Goodbye (c)TheBookTrail

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

Imagine if you wake up and your whole family is gone. then more than 25 years later, you’re married and still none the wiser as to what happened that day?

Cynthia is now married and something happens to lead her to want to know more. But you wonder alongside her whether you really want to know or not. Where is your investigation going to lead?

Her husband travels from one place to another in the search for the truth and this is where the novel got really interesting. The places he goes and the people he meets along the way. All the while, he wonders if his own wife could have had something to do with what happened that night. Even the police are starting to doubt her. When he went in search of her old boyfriend who she was with that night, I thought, oh oh here we go.

THEN Cynthia is Certain she seen her brother in a cafe so she and her husband follow him….Oh dear goodness I thought, this is not going to go well.

Then a note appears and a hat appears on the kitchen table inside their home…..this was getting exciting!

Turns those pages that’s for sure. Milford, CT is the main setting and it was nice to spend time in suburbia and see a normal family fall apart as they search for the answers. Who is telling the truth and what IS the truth after all this time. I was dying to know what happened to that family.

It’s an easy read. Maybe some things are a bit unbelievable (when the husband meet someone from the wife’s past) but it’s all a bit of harmless fun. I didn’t care for Cynthia as she seemed more than disturbed but given her past, well, I still didn’t really care for her. And the rest of them aren’t what you call stand up citizens! The crazy threads all do weave together so you get the answers you’re looking for.