Since You've Been Gone

What's inside (8 sections)

1. The Pre-Sloane Emily and a Plan to Do Nothing
2. Sloane Is Gone
3. Thirteen Things I Would Never Do
4. Frank Porter Shows Up
5. Collins, Dawn and a Different Kind of Summer Crew
6. Finding Sloane and Finding a Voice
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up this book because a friend kept calling it the list book and said it ruined every other summer book for her. I expected something light, the kind of paperback you finish on a porch. What I got was longer and more tender than that. This book by Morgan Matson was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 449 pages, ISBN 9781442435001. It follows one summer in a small Connecticut town, narrated by a shy seventeen year old who loses her best friend in May and spends the summer trying to earn her back by doing things that scare her.

Pre-Sloane Emily is how Emily Hughes describes herself at the start, and I loved that phrase. Before Sloane Williams, Emily did not go to parties. She barely talked to boys. She kept her head down, got good grades, and let other people have stories while she listened. Her parents are playwrights, kind but distracted. Her younger brother Beckett is loud and chaotic. Emily is the quiet one.

Then Sloane moved in down the street and decided they were going to be best friends. Sloane is outgoing, funny, a little reckless. She pulled Emily into sleepovers and beach days and inside jokes. For two years they were inseparable.

I recognized that friendship immediately. One person drives, the other navigates. One person says let us go, the other says okay even though her stomach flips. Emily adores Sloane. Sloane adores Emily. It feels warm and a little unequal in the way teen friendships often are, where love is huge and self knowledge is still thin.

The Pre-Sloane Emily and a Plan to Do Nothing

School ends and the days stretch out. Emily and Sloane have a shared language built from notes and playlists and late night texts about nothing.

Emily is comfortable being invisible. She works a summer job, hangs around the house, watches her parents argue about dialogue and blocking, teases Beckett, waits for Sloane to text with the plan. At a party she stands near the snacks. In class she knows the answer and does not raise her hand. It is habit, not misery. She has decided she is the quiet friend and she plays the part well.

Matson does not present Emily as broken. She is young and cautious, raised by artistic parents who love her but do not always notice when she shrinks. They ask about her day while reading scripts. They forget to ask follow up questions. Beckett fills silence by being young and feral and funny. Emily learns to take up less space at home and carries that into school.

The slacker summer plan fits her. No internship. No grand travel. Just beach mornings, movies in town, driving around with music loud. Emily is content to let Sloane choose the adventures. That contentment matters later, because when Sloane leaves, Emily has to figure out what she wants when nobody is choosing for her.

A small criticism already. These early chapters move slowly. Matson lingers on sophomore parties and junior lunches to make us miss Sloane. I understand the choice, but at 449 pages the book could trim here. Readers who came for the list might fidget while Emily replays memories in her bedroom. Still, the voice is wry. Emily notices how her mother reheats coffee three times and never drinks it. Those details kept me reading.

Sloane Is Gone

Then Sloane vanishes.

No fight. No goodbye note. One day in May, Emily goes to Sloane house and it is empty. Furniture gone. Closets cleared. No answer on her phone. No reply to texts. Sloane parents have moved the whole family without telling Emily or her parents. Calls go unanswered. It is as if her best friend was erased between weekends.

Emily handles it badly at first, which felt honest. She bikes past the house for days. She keeps texting though nobody answers. She makes excuses. Maybe a family emergency. Maybe a sudden job move. Maybe Sloane will call once things settle. She replays their last weeks looking for a clue. Was Sloane quieter than usual. Did Sam, Sloane boyfriend, know something.

Sam does not know much either. He and Sloane were close, but Sloane kept compartments. Emily realizes she did not know as much about Sloane home life as she thought. Sloane was brilliant at performing closeness while holding back hard parts. That stings. Emily wonders if she was a good friend or just an audience. I have had that thought about old friendships and it is awful, the kind that arrives at midnight and stays till morning.

Her parents try to help in their distracted way. They offer sympathy between rehearsals. Beckett asks blunt kid questions that land harder than adult comfort. Where did she go. Why did she not say bye. Are you still best friends if someone leaves.

Summer starts without its center. Emily goes to the orchard parties and stands on the edge. She works her shifts. She watches other groups form. She feels behind already and it is only June.

Matson captures ghost grief well, where nobody died but someone is gone and you cannot mourn cleanly because you keep hoping. Emily is angry and loyal at once. She defends Sloane, then cries because maybe Sloane was selfish. That contradiction is exactly how abandonment feels at seventeen.

If there is a flaw, Sloane in memory feels too perfect at first. Hilarious and brave and generous. Later we learn she could be controlling and secretive. I wished the early chapters had planted more cracks. It would have made the later reveal land with less jolt.

Thirteen Things I Would Never Do

Two weeks after Sloane disappears, the list arrives in the mail.

Thirteen tasks in Sloane handwriting, things Emily would never choose. Apple picking at night. Dance until dawn. Kiss a stranger. Go skinny dipping. Ride a horse. Steal something. And others in the same spirit, silly and scary and oddly specific. At the bottom Sloane wrote that when Emily finishes, she should find Sloane and tell her all about it.

Emily decides the list is a map. If she does what Sloane asked, Sloane will come back, or at least explain. It is not logical. She knows that. But it gives her purpose when summer feels shapeless.

Each item forces Emily into a different corner of town. Apple picking at night means sneaking into the orchard after dark with flashlights, climbing ladders while trying not to fall, eating tart fruit while bugs circle the lights. It sounds simple until you are seventeen and trespassing and your heart pounds at every passing car. Dance until dawn means staying out past her limits, sore feet and loud music and learning to stay when she would usually slip away. Ride a horse means facing a physical fear, the animal huge and warm under her. Steal something sounds small until Emily, rule follower to her core, has to live with the buzzing guilt after.

Kiss a stranger might be the most dreaded. Emily has barely dated. Walking up to someone she does not know feels impossible. Go skinny dipping feels equally impossible, for reasons involving cold water and being seen. Matson lets Emily stall, attempt, fail, retry. Some items get checked off quickly with help. Others hang over chapters like homework she cannot start.

What keeps the middle from feeling episodic is that each task needs accomplices. Emily cannot pick apples alone. She cannot dance till morning without a ride. The list pushes her into rooms she would never enter, and those rooms hold future friends.

Yes, the middle sags. At 449 pages this is thick for contemporary. A couple tasks blur, orchard parties start to feel similar, and Emily internal debate circles the same worry. I skimmed one long night drive that restated what I knew. She is scared. She wants to be brave. She misses Sloane. An editor could have cut twenty pages.

But the best moments earn length. When Emily manages something she thought she could not do, the triumph feels physical. I grinned at my kitchen table. Small bravery counts.

Frank Porter Shows Up

Frank Porter enters as a surprise ally, and he almost stole the book for me.

Emily has known Frank for years without knowing him. Neighborhood kid, then popular and easygoing classmate. Emily assumed they had nothing in common. After Sloane leaves, their paths cross because Frank is restless that summer too, and kind in a practical way. He teases Emily enough to make her laugh without making her feel small.

He agrees to help with the list, partly as a favor, partly from curiosity, partly because he likes Emily more than expected. Their rhythm starts awkward. Emily is prickly about needing help. Frank jokes through discomfort. Slowly they settle. He holds the flashlight while she climbs. She navigates while he drives. He talks her into staying ten more minutes. She talks him into talking about his family instead of deflecting.

The fake dating piece grows from this. They pretend to be together to solve short term problems, to get into places or deflect attention. It is familiar and Matson knows it. What makes it work is how bad they are at faking first. Emily overthinks gestures. Frank overplays the easy boyfriend act. Adults buy it more than peers, which is funny and true. Over time the line blurs. Hand holding that started as cover starts to feel like the best part of the night. Texts that started as logistics turn personal.

Frank carries expectations about college and behavior and who he should be. His family looks polished and feels strained. He uses humor to dodge serious talks. Emily, raised by theater parents who process everything out loud, finds his avoidance baffling. She wants to name the problem. He wants to drive until it feels smaller.

I liked Frank, though he sometimes feels too good to be true. Patient when Emily cancels. He remembers details about Beckett. He apologizes without making Emily comfort him. Real boys can be this decent. I have known boys this sweet. But after so many flawed adults, Frank occasionally reads like a wish. The book needs his steadiness, so I forgave it.

Their romance stays sweet, which fits the tone. Long talks in parked cars. Frank notices Emily is tired before she admits it. Emily notices when Frank goes quiet in a way that means his parents called.

Collins, Dawn and a Different Kind of Summer Crew

If Sloane was Emily past, Collins and Dawn are her possible future. I did not expect to care about them so much.

Collins is dry and observant, tired of the town party cycle but still shows up. Dawn is warmer, dealing with her own boyfriend mess when Emily meets her, crying in a bathroom first and then becoming steady. Emily meets them through work and through Frank, in that tangled summer way where you keep running into people until they become friends.

No instant sisterhood here. Just shared shifts, shared rides, sitting on curbs waiting for food. Collins teases Emily about her plans. Dawn asks real questions and listens. Emily, used to being sidekick, does not know how to be an equal. She over apologizes. She assumes she is boring. She waits to be invited instead of inviting.

Slowly that shifts. Emily starts to host instead of attend. She remembers Dawn schedule and offers coverage. She asks Collins for advice and takes it seriously. She learns small things, how Collins takes coffee, how Dawn laughs when truly surprised. Those accumulations are friendship, even if they do not photograph well.

Beckett is a delight in these chapters. Annoying and tender by turns. He hero worships Frank a little. He misses Sloane because Sloane was fun and now Emily is sad. He barges into Emily room and sometimes says the exact true thing she needed. One evening where Emily lets him stay for a movie instead of shooing him out moved me more than several parties. It showed growth without announcing it.

Her parents also gain texture. Not bad, just self absorbed in a creative way, preoccupied with a production heading toward Edinburgh, rewriting at midnight. They love Emily but let Sloane do a lot of daily parenting by proxy. When Sloane leaves, the gap shows. To their credit, they start to notice. Her mother asks a second question. Her father puts down the script and drives her somewhere. Incremental, not miraculous. I believed it.

My criticism is that the book juggles many people and drops threads. Sam drifts. Work friends appear once then vanish. I kept a mental roster. Still, by August Emily has people who save her a seat. She is not popular in the Sloane sense. She is connected, which lasts longer.

Finding Sloane and Finding a Voice

The last third asks what Emily avoided all summer. What if finishing the list does not bring Sloane back as hoped.

I will keep spoilers light. Emily does track Sloane down. The reunion is not what she pictured in June. Sloane has reasons involving family pressure and secrets and a need to escape a version of herself she disliked. Some inspire sympathy. Others frustrate. Sloane protected herself and hurt Emily, and she does not fully own that first. She is still charismatic and funny. She is still evasive when talk gets hard.

Their talk is messy in a good way. Emily spent months becoming braver with Frank and Dawn and Collins. She tries to use that voice with Sloane and finds it harder than expected. Old patterns pull. She wants to forgive instantly because she missed her friend. She also wants to yell because she was left alone for the hardest summer. Both are true. Matson lets them coexist without forcing a clean moral.

Emily does not fold back into the old role. She loves Sloane. That love does not vanish because Sloane disappointed her. But Emily no longer accepts being junior partner who follows every plan. She names what hurt. She asks for honesty going forward. Whether Sloane can meet her there stays more open than expected, and I liked the restraint.

Frank and Emily land warm without fairy dust. Collins and Dawn stay as proof Emily can build friendships herself, rather than inheriting them through someone else. Her parents stay flawed and loving, but more present. Beckett stays Beckett.

What stays with me is the shift in posture. Early Emily waits to be chosen. Late Emily chooses. She invites. She drives. She stays late because she wants to, rather than because Sloane dared her. She dances because the song is good and friends are near. The list was scaffolding. The life underneath is hers.

Would I recommend it. Yes, with caveats. If you want a fast mystery about a missing girl, this is not that. If you want a summer book about a shy girl who tries scary things, makes real friends, falls for a decent boy, and renegotiates her oldest friendship on equal terms, this delivers. Bring patience for the middle.

I closed it thinking about my own Sloane, the friend who taught me to order food by phone when I feared talking to strangers. We grew apart after high school, from distance more than drama. I wish we had a list to finish together.

FAQ

When was Since You've Been Gone published?

It was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. The hardcover runs 449 pages with ISBN 9781442435001.

Is Since You've Been Gone part of a series?

No, it is a standalone contemporary novel. Emily, Sloane, Frank, Collins, and Dawn do not return as leads in another book.

Who is Frank Porter?

He is a classmate who helps Emily finish Sloane thirteen tasks. Their fake dating arrangement slowly turns into a sweet, steady romance.