All progress in terms of intrigue, and development, throughout Fade has left the building. While Lisa McMann is totally still my girl, Gone was not my cup of tea.


Gone 
by Lisa McMann

Things should be great for Janie—she has graduated from high school and is spending her summer with Cabel, the guy she’s totally in love with. But deep down she’s panicking about how she’s going to survive her future when getting sucked into other people’s dreams is really starting to take its toll.
 
Things get even more complicated when she meets her father for the very first time—and he’s in a coma. 

As Janie uncovers his secret past, she begins to realize that the choice thought she had has more dire consequences than she ever imagined.


Oh, I so wanted this one to work out for me. Lisa McMann really hit her stride with Fade and I had such high hopes for Gone. Yet, once again, I'm left feeling drastically underwhelmed and maybe even a little bit lost. Because, to be perfectly honest with you guys I felt like very little happened in Gone; and mostly all of it is listed, or alluded to, in the synopsis alone.

Gone is, of course, the conclusion to the Wake trilogy. Yet, nothing about it screamed 'conclusion'. It felt half-written and painfully so. While the intrigue and mystery is there, there's still that massive gap in the world-building and even, to a degree, some of the character development. McMann, however, makes up for some of the lesser qualities of Gone by dishing up some solidly emotional moments and her signature snark.

Which is just... blah. You know something isn't your cup of tea when it had so few traits I'd deem as its saving grace. Throughout the entirety of Gone, I felt myself asking so many questions and not receiving much in terms of answers. Much like with Wake, we're thrust into something with very little to build off of and it gets confusing. The context gets muddled and, to be blunt, the story never really comes into focus.

Here's what I know: Janie's father makes his first, and only, appearance. And he is basically dead, so it's not as though there are many compelling moments between the two. Gone could have been so much more, had we seen more pieces put together when it comes to the powers and connections made throughout the series.

Although there's a lot of gaps in this conclusion, McMann captures the mixed bag of emotions that Janie slips into beautifully. Grief, resentment, fear, love, hope and defeat, are just me scraping the surface when it comes to what emotions can be found within Gone. Overall, this installment felt intensely underdeveloped and so open-ended, it made me feel as though it wasn't meant to be merely a trilogy.