REVIEW: NO ONE KNOWS, BY J. T. ELLISON

 

 

They were true soul mates, or so they believed. Childhood best friends, then sweethearts, and finally, husband and wife: They were Aubrey Trenton and Joshua Hamilton, forever connected.

Then their bond was severed by his disappearance one night, when the two were attending pre-wedding parties for friends in a local hotel.

Set in Nashville, the story told in No One Knows weaves together the history of these two, both before his disappearance and after. Her parents died when she was young, and she grew up mostly in foster care. He was emotionally smothered by his controlling mother, Daisy, but otherwise, his life seemed more normal. In the early years of their marriage, he was in medical school and then he was a young doctor. Their future had seemed wide open.

Alternate narratives spanned the Before years and continued for a five year period After…on the face of things, it was almost impossible to see anything but an unfortunate series of tragic events that led to that fateful night. But before the story ends, we come to learn a lot more. Stunned by how events ultimately played out, I could not stop turning pages, never knowing what would happen next. What sudden turn might change everything about what I thought I knew, and make it impossible to know who was more unreliable as a narrator: Josh or Aubrey? Or both.

Like a kaleidoscope that distorts events, revealing something different every time you turn it, the world we see through the eyes of Josh and Aubrey was a crazy one indeed. A book that I will not soon forget. 5 stars.

*** I received an e-ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.