Told in two timelines the reader learns about circumstances that led to the drastic choice Emily made and about her current life as Connie. I am interested in the ways lies gather energy - which inevitably, sooner or later, becomes too strong to contain.

stars: As the book jacket claims, Emily Morris takes advantage of 9/11 and disappears from her life. Realistic characters, dialogue, and relationships drew me in from page one, and touched me emotionally in the end!I love the book and cannot believe this is another (like Burying the Honeysuckle Girls) by a first time novelist. I don't think I would do as Emily did, but I don't dare judge the decision she made - no one should until you've walked in those particular shoes. But both women readily agree that adapting Hooper’s novel as an audio drama was an opportunity to get deeper into the character of Emily/Connie at two stages of her life, as a recent graduate starting out on a romance and then years later in Los Angeles, when she’s looking back on what she did to escape from New York and the consequences of her actions.

The sign of a good novel to me is that the people are memorable and their story gets the imagination going about what's next for the characters. Kim Hooper skillfully portrays a courageous woman facing a grave diagnosis, who must confront her difficult past for the sake of her teenage daughter. He was forty-something, with a gold chain around his neck and a faded sticker of the Puerto Rican flag on his glove compartment. is a stalwart of book narration (including the Wheel of Time series) and recently hosted the true crime-ish podcast Mother, Neighbor, Russian Spy. I’ve been interested in sporting minutiae and marginal gains since reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, about how tiny changes can make a massive difference.

Which is surely better than stewing over it (even if it's a big long run in the opposite direction of 'dealing with it'). She was Oscar-nominated for Gone Girl, won a Golden Globe for I Care a Lot and an Emmy for State of the Union. The tears weren’t for the vehicle itself, but for the memories associated with it—driving out to Coney Island during the summer before college, stuffing all my belongings in the hatchback for the move to the dorms at NYU, kissing the guy who would become my husband in the front seat after seeing City Slickers in a second-run theater with sticky floors from spilled sodas. Still I don't think I would have done what she did, made the decision she did or at least not for that length of time anyway. The author zooms in on the role of caretaker and points out how it messes with everyone’s head, how it can trigger guilt, frustration, regret, depression, martyrdom.

There's evidence to suggest that some people likely used the tragedy of 9/11 to fake their own deaths. In an audio format, it can be hard to know whether you want to stick around to hear what happens to the protagonist – but you can rest assured with Pike's captivating performance, which gives much-needed compassion and humanity to this complex character.

We follow Connie in the present as she grapples with cancer treatment, her role as a mother and relationship with Claire. She moves from New York to California, reinvents herself as Connie Prynne and concentrates all her attention on caring for her daughter Claire and keeping her job as a bartender. Hooper reminds us that control is an illusion, that the past offers no pardons and the choices we make, in turn, make us.

Even if she was horrible to almost everyone she knew, I still can't dislike her that much because I see way too much of myself in her. I probably would have ended the deception much earlier myself, but I felt that Emily could simultaneously do what she did and also be a good person inside. But she also leads us back through her memories of being Emily and tries to make sense of the past she’s tried so hard to forget and move on from. He’s always been a face I’ve known and obviously House is where he perfected his brilliant American accent.

The details behind why she may have disappeared rather than died in 9/11 are in New York Magazine and whatever you think happened to Philip, it makes for a captivating premise, which is something Pike describes as "haunting" when discussing why she got involved in the audio drama. When it feels, that Emily's situation is too intense and can't get much worse, the author switches to Connie's life and vice versa. There’s something thrilling about being privy to a character’s innermost secrets, their confessions and their selfish desires.