CMash Reads: Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin

Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin
Published by Downtown Press (Division of Simon & Schuster)
ISBN 978-1-4391-2333-1
At the request of Gallery & Pocket Books, a PB copy was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest opinion.
Synopsis (from back of book): Once, Jane Moore and Alexandra Walsh were inseparable, sharing secrets and stolen candy, plotting their futures together. But when Jane became pregnant at seventeen, they drifted slowly apart. Jane has spent the years since raising her son, now seventeen himself, on her own, running a gallery, managing her sister's art career, and looking after their volatile mother-all the while trying not to resent the limited choices life has given her.
Then a quirk of fate and a faulty elevator bring Jane into contact with Tom, Alexandra's husband, who has some shocking news, Alexandra disappeared from a south Dublin suburb months ago and Tom has been searching fruitlessly for her. Jane offers to help, as do the elevator's other passengers-Janes's brilliant but self-absorbed sister, Elle and Leslie Sheehan, a reclusive web designer who's ready to step back into the world again. And as Jane quickly realizes Tom isn't the only one among them who's looking for something...or traveling toward unexpected revelations about love, life, and what it means to let go, in every sense.
My Thoughts and Opinion: Most books I read, I can't wait to finish it to find out the ending. I was totally ambivalent with this one. I hated to see it end, but then I also wanted to see how it did end. I don't know about you, but, I become part of the story in which I am reading. That is why I didn't want to turn the last page because I became friends with the characters of this book. In Alexandra, Gone, the author writes a story of the lives of many loveable, but at times, troubled characters. I found myself laughing out loud on one page, eyes filling with tears on another, and frustrated with them on yet another. Ms. McPartlin tells a tender, funny, poignant and moving story of friendship, loss, disappointment, pain, denial and love on so many levels. This book is the type of book that you get so engrossed while reading that you are unaware of what is going on around you, at least that is what happened to me. I highly recommend reading Alexandra, Gone and becoming friends with Jane, Elle, Leslie and all the other characters.