Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson – review

‘This book was a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-and-then-cry-on-the-next kind of book for me, a real emotional rollercoaster’

Some books leave a very real mark on you and Since You’ve Been Gone is one of those utterly brilliant books. This is definitely one of my new favourite contemporaries and I cannot believe that it has outrageously taken me this long to read it.

Since You’ve Been Gone is the story of Emily Hughes’ summer. After her best friend, Sloane, disappears with her family and leaves no trace, Emily is left alone and friendless for summer. Without any indication of where she’s gone or when she’ll be back, Sloane mails Emily a list of challenges for her to do during the summer. Emily believes that if she completes this list, Sloane will return home and in her quest to tick every item off, Emily makes some of the best and sweetest friendships of her life. So, without spoiling anything, that is the general plot of this book, although I was originally enticed solely by the beautiful cover!

Now that I’ve read (AND LOVED) this book, I can assure you that it is above and beyond what the cover tells you. Since the book is set over a long summer period, one of the most striking things about it is the character development that you see from not only our main character, Emily, but also the new friends she makes. Emily starts out as a timid and frankly bland character that lives in the shadow of her eccentric best friend. Since Sloane is gone for the majority of the book, we get to see Emily start to come out of her shell and become a completely different person. I loved the slow nature of this and how it was the little things that changed Emily because I can relate to that, and I understand why Matson presented these as such a challenge to Emily. Seeing these changes in Emily also highlighted Emily’s new friends’ (Frank, Collins and Dawn) development too. Emily starts off with a preconceived idea about Frank and Collins but as she changes and lets them in a bit, we see her views of them change too and the whole friendship that forms between all of them is just so, so sweet and great. It’s quite hard for me to elaborate on the character development of this book without spoiling anything so, for now, all you need to know is that the characters change for the better!

One aspect that appears to be quite central to Emily’s life is her family. Both Emily’s parents are playwrights that work in the local university during the school year and then settle into a familiar routine during the summer. However, throughout the summer that SYBG is set in, her parents are writing a new play. This leaves them quite disinterested in Emily and her younger brother Beckett, which makes for a fairly free summer for Emily and also lets us see another side of her character. Since Beckett is so much younger than Emily, she has to look after him at times, a task that she appears to enjoy. It’s great to be able to see the sisterly side of Emily since some of the decisions she makes in regard to Beckett throughout the book are vastly different from what she would have decided at the beginning of the book. Beckett also acts as a sort of filler character to keep the plot lighter or more amusing in places, which is always welcome.

Frank Porter. Now Frank Porter is the class president, the smart “geek” with perfect grades and a perfect long-term relationship, and he’s also the man of my dreams. When Frank first befriends Emily in an amusing encounter, Emily has a very set, preconceived idea of him and this idea is challenged at every turn as she gets to know Frank more and more. I love how their friendship develops because it is so new to Emily - to have friends other than Sloane - and I think in some ways that’s quite sad. We get to see newer and more fun sides of both of them and one of the more unique methods the Matson shows this is through music playlists. Since Emily and Frank are running buddies who listen to music as they run, eventually they start to share their music tastes and swap iPods. In a stroke of pure genius, Matson added some of these playlists into the book within the dialogue/plot so that we can see as their music tastes start to overlap. I think that is just such a great way really to highlight how these characters are changing because the music acts like a direct indication of the status of their friendship/relationship.

Another thing that Matson challenged within this book was my opinion of Emily and Sloane’s relationship. When I first saw how quite boring and closed up Emily was, I couldn’t help but blame their friendship for leaving Emily the way she was. However, as you move through the story and learn little bits of information here and there about the two of them, along with the interesting ending, Matson completely made me U-turn on my opinion about the pair of them.

My only criticism of the book would be that some of the later events are fairly obvious from the beginning but, to be honest, that’s not really a drawback for me since it built up the anticipation all the more whilst I was reading the book!

Another aspect or detail that I loved about SYBG is Morgan’s inclusion of memories that explain different things on the list or Emily’s personality. These memories are very frequent at the beginning of the book but as Emily changes and matures, they become more sparse. My take on this is that as Emily changes and Sloane’s “hold” on her weakens, the memories impact Emily less so they’re less frequent! Whatever their meaning, I enjoyed being able to get that back story and explanation throughout the book.

This book was a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-and-then-cry-on-the-next kind of book for me, a real emotional rollercoaster. I love how Morgan Matson was able to take these fictional characters and friendships and make me feel so madly emotional about how their lives and summers turn out. I think that’s absolutely fantastic and THAT is why I love reading so much. Since You’ve Been Gone teaches you what real friendships are but it also teaches you to be brave in your own lives and friendships and that sometimes taking a small risk is worth what you get in the end.

Definitely a 5 star contemporary summer read for me.

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