Vanished - Book Review

“Vanished” by Danielle Steel, one of the most popular authors in the world, is a suspense story. The story takes place in late 1930s.

Marielle, a young girl of 18, meets a wealthy young man Charles, during her Grand Europe tour with her parents, and elopes with him. They get married and become proud parents of a little boy, and hoped to lead a happy and wonderful life. But destiny had something else in store for them, and they get separated due to extreme circumstances.

Later, at twenty-four, Marielle meets Malcolm, a wealthy business man in New York, who was forty-nine and was not interested in knowing the darker side of her past, in spite of her repeated attempts to tell him. He was admired by all and married Marielle to beget children to inherit his abundance of wealth. For him, Marielle was an attractive, dignified and undemanding wife. As he wished, she gave birth to a cute little boy, and they were very happy in their own way. Being a faithful and devoted wife, she felt grateful to him for having given her so much and he asked for so little.

One day when Malcolm was on a foreign trip, Marielle took their son Teddy to the park, where she happened to meet her ex husband, who was not married again, and still loved her, and she realized she too still had the same love and passion for him. He wanted her to return to him, but she turned down his offer being a wife to someone else.

The next day at home, to everyone’s surprise, Teddy was missing from his room mysteriously. The main part of the story is about the child’s disappearance, and his parent’s struggle to find him, which takes more than 3/4th of the story. Steel has woven this story with many fascinating turns and twists, which moves at a fast pace, capturing your attention till the end.

You can find elements of love, guilt, desires, suspense, true love of mother etc. in this novel. Besides, you will also know what is life in a house surrounded by police and court proceedings in “Vanished” which has a twisting end. Like many of Steel’s novels, I enjoyed reading this too.