Summary
The Sunday morning starts like any other, aside from the slight hangover. Dani Keller wakes up on a Seattle houseboat, a headache building behind her eyes from the wine she drank at a party the night before. But in this particular Sunday morning, she’s surprised to see her husband, Ian, is not home. As the hours pass, Dani fills her day with small things. But still, Ian does not return. Irritation shifts to worry, worry slides almost imperceptibly into panic. And then, like a relentless blackness, the terrible realization hits Dani: He’s gone.

As the police work methodically through all the logical explanations—he’s hurt, he’s run off, he’s been killed—Dani searches frantically for a clue as to whether Ian is in fact dead or alive. And, slowly, she unpacks their relationship, holding each moment up to the light, from it intense, adulterous beginning, to the grandeur of their new love, to the difficulties of forever. She examines all the sins she can—and cannot—remember. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, tunring over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth—about herself, her husband, and their lives together.

Review
A suspenseful novel from beginning to end, He’s Gone deals with the inner turmoil all humans face of doing the right or wrong thing, being nice or mean, and being strong or cowardice. He’s Gone also makes you analyze how much you truly love someone and what things you are willing to do and put up with for them. Most importantly, this novel takes a look into the world of adultery and how everything is not as black and white as we like to hope and there is a different opinion from every perspective.

Our story begins with our leading lady, Dani waking up alone thinking about what would happen if she just left as well as waking up to her husband being gone. Of course Dani just assumes he is blowing off steam (or blowing her off) because of the fight they had the night before and thus she thinks nothing of it. Yet hours tick by and she hasn’t heard from him. Is he still just trying to be mean or did something really happen?

Now Dani is really worried. It’s the next day and Ian hasn’t called back or even come home. Thus she has to call the police but not only that, Dani has to call Ian’s daughters (from his previous marriage) and possibly his ex-wife (the woman Dani stole Ian from), to see if they know of his whereabouts. And with the fight looming over her head, Dani wonders if he just left altogether, to spite her, making her question their marriage and if it was such a good idea.

Pushing all her concerns aside, Dani tries to remember the last night she was with Ian, trying to remember some small detail that will help her figure out what happened to her husband. Only there is one problem, Dani can’t remember the last time she was with Ian. Well, she can remember the party, that dress he had her wear, his tight jawline, her aching feet and sleep. But everything else is a blank. Suddenly Dani realizes she doesn’t have the slightest idea of what could have happened to Ian.

Of course this only makes matters worse with the police. If she can’t even remember whether or not he came to bed with her that night, it would appear she had something to do with his disappearance. But surely Dani would never do anything to Ian. In fact, she’s sure of it. What she isn’t sure of, is where he’s gone.

Dani is certain Ian left her and is being spiteful. Being married to Ian was like being married to “Mr. Perfect.” He was always so critical and he never made any mistakes. So of course that meant Dani made too many mistakes, which Ian had no problem pointing out. Thus something Dani’s therapist (from her separation from the abusive ex-husband Mark) said comes back to mind, “A person always carries their true self with them,” or something to that effect. Which makes Dani believe that the Ian she is married to is the same Ian Mary (the ex-wife) had to endure. Which makes her wonder if they weren’t doomed from the start and this was always going to happen, him leaving her?

More days have gone by and the police suspect her even more as the culprit, plus there is the deal with the mystery cuff link left on her doorstep for Ian, which confirms Dani’s guess that Ian did leave her but now for another woman. And Dani takes a closer look at her marriage, seeing that maybe she was never good enough for Ian. That Ian had lost his home and the love of his daughters for a simple life with her and the consolation was no prize. The further Dani deeps to find out what happened to Ian, the further she looks into her marriage to see the flaws that were always there, questioning the man she married and the woman she was trying to be versus who she really is.

I must confess, I read ahead before I finished the book and discovered what really happened to Ian. Yet despite knowing how it all ended, there were so many twists and turns throughout the novel that I wasn’t sure how it all matched out to the end. Not to say that the novel was confusing but that there was still some surprises to be had. He’s Gone takes you further back in time while simultaneously propelling forward in the future, delving deeper into the up and downs of love, marriage and fidelity. He’s Gone also looks at the issue of right and wrong and which situations is it okay to sometimes be wrong and give up trying to do the right thing. However, it still teaches the value of doing the right thing and the consequences of doing wrong. Most importantly, this novel makes you take a look at yourself and wonder of what you truly are capable of and what you are willing to put up with and live without. As I stated a suspenseful as well as thought provoking read that will keep you guessing about the book as well as life itself.

Reviewed by Camia Rhodes

Book Information
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 5/14/2013
Pages: 352

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Summary
“Scarlet spends most of her time worrying about other people. Some are her friends, others are practically strangers, and then there are the ones no one even notices. Trying to fix their lives comes naturally to her. And pushing her own needs to the side is part of the deal.

So when her older sister comes home unexpectedly married and pregnant, Scarlet has a new person to worry about. But all of her good intentions are shattered when the unthinkable happens: She falls for her sister’s husband. For the first time in a long time, Scarlet’s not fixing a problem, she’s at the center of one. And ignoring her feelings doesn’t seem to be an option . . .”

Review
It has always been understood that caring for someone was indeed kind and not selfish. Even if the only reasons why you care is because you want that person to care back or appreciate what you did. You always rationalize, “Well, I am doing something nice,” or “At least I had good intentions,” but sometimes it’s cruel to care because you make people think you care, when in truth, you never did. The Six Rules of Maybe is a book about learning the difference between true kindness and true selfishness. That sometimes it’s okay to want for ourselves, because we’re human and that if you’re only being kind to make yourself feel better, then you’re not being kind at all. This book is also about hoping and quitting and learning that quitting isn’t giving up on hope but starting over and taking hope in a new direction. Yet most truly, this book is about learning the differences between bad and good and how some things are really that bad but some things, much as we want to believe, aren’t really that good either.

Speaking of good and bad things, we have a tale of two sisters, Scarlet the good who cares about others and Juliet the bad who only seems to care about herself. Yet when Juliet suddenly comes home pregnant with a husband, Hayden, Scarlet finds herself thinking about what she wants and not seeming to care about her sister, Juliet.

However, Scarlet cannot deny who is, a person who cares and forces herself to overly care her neighbor, Clive Weaver, who is suffering from a little depression; and her other neighbor, Fiona Saint George, also known as “Goth Girl,” who seems completely unhappy with her life. She even tries to help out her new brother-in-law with his relationship with Juliet, who doesn’t seem to love him. Yet somewhere deep down Scarlet knows she is being ever helpful in order to cover up the guilt she feels for liking Juliet’s husband, Hayden.

Still she presses on, denying these notions and starts the “Clive Weaver Project,” where she makes paper cranes out of her mail to put in his mailbox, so he can feel like he’s still getting mail and that someone cares about him. With “Goth Girl,” she just complements her on her good yet disturbing chalk drawings on the Saint George’s driveway; and with Hayden, she waits for him to go outside at night and quietly joins him, offering him a little friendly company.

Yet even with these “good intentions,” things back fire. The “Clive Weaver Project” gets thrown on a back burner, she ends up setting up Fiona (“Goth Girl”) with a boy who’s explosive in more ways than one and a mistake with Hayden causes her to lose a good friend and possibly a sister. And Scarlet is face to face with the consequences of her “kindness,” wondering why good (kindness, though slightly false) had not triumphed over evil (selfishness and Juliet) and where had it all gone wrong? Thus learning that what she might have hoped for was misguided and that taking a step back from intervening in other’s lives could be the best for her and everyone involved.

True kindness is not doing something nice for someone else but a desire to see that someone else is happy. That being a little selfish is an act of kindness upon one self, if done right and that hope is a way to get to the happy ending and giving up can simply be a way to redirect one’s hope. Most importantly, The Six Rules of Maybe is simply about using the good and bad within us to the best of our abilities and not just sticking to an idealistic view of good and bad that may not be at all what we had thought.

Reviewed by Camia Rhodes