Review: Gone by Lisa McMann

Gone (Wake, Book 3)
by Lisa McMann
2010 Simon Pulse
214 Pages
Hardcover Edition
ISBN:978-1-4169-7918-0
Genre: Young Adult

3.5/5 Stars

Summary (Press Release)
Janie thought she knew what her future held. And she'd thought she made her peace with it. But she can't handle dragging Cabel down with her.

She knows he will stay with, despite what she sees in his dreams. He's amazing. And she's a train wreck. Janie sees only one way to give him the life he deserves: She has to disappear. And it's going to kill them both.

Then a stranger enters her life - and everything unravels. The future Janie onced faced now has an ominous twist, and her choices are more dire than she'd ever thought possible. She alone must decide between the lesser of two evils. And time is running out...

My Thoughts
I really enjoyed the first two books in this series, Wake and Fade and looked forward to reading the Gone, the conclusion to the Wake trilogy. I found Janie's forays into other people's dreams to be absolutely fascinating and the way she was learning to manipulate those dreams to help people was amazing. The side effects to those manipulations and to those dreams was downright upsetting and until it was mentioned in the books, it had actually never occurred to me that there may be side effects.

The third book in the series deals with the aftermath of Janie's discovery of the side effects of her dreams and the choices she has to make. While it is very interesting and I learned more about the consequences of the choices Janie has to make, I truly didn't find it as absorbing as the first two books. And when Janie's father steps into the picture finally after all these years, it was kind of anti-climatic. I think maybe I expected too much from that development and was left feeling very disappointed when very little grew out of it except that it helped Janie finally make her final decision as to what she was going to do with her future. I do have to admit that I do not know what I would have done in Janie's shoes and faced with the choices she had. I really had to admire her spirit, even though she wanted to hide from the world forever, as she made her final choice with courage. The fact that she had such strong love and support from Cabel certainly helps, although that too was an agonizing decision for Janie. Janie is a mature, complicated character who has developed considerably since we first met her in Wake.

What I did find difficult in this book was that nothing else happened other than Janie dealing with her difficult choice and dealing with Cabel and his difficult choices and dealing with the sudden arrival of her father. I would have loved to have seen her deal more with Captain and learned more about the after-effects of the events in Fade. This kind of got glossed over in book 3 and to say I was disappointed was an understatement. Although I enjoyed the book, it didn't have the same magical appeal to me as books 1 and 2.

Verdict
Gone was an easy read that dealt with the difficult choices Janie had to make about her future. Although it was enjoyable, it certainly did not have the appeal for me that Wake and Fade had for me. I am really hoping that Ms. McMann continues Janie's story sometime in the future as I felt that Janie's story somehow isn't finished. I, for one, who love to read more about Janie and Cabel in the future.