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On paper, this collaboration is an unlikely pairing - a bestselling thriller architect and an Oscar-winning actress turned publishing tastemaker. In practice, Gone Before Goodbye makes a strong case that the combination works, even if it doesn't always fire on all cylinders.

The novel centres on Maggie McCabe, a former Army combat surgeon whose life has collapsed after a series of personal tragedies leads to her medical licence being revoked. At rock bottom, she agrees to a secretive, high-stakes surgical job for a mysterious client, and the moment she steps onto a private jet bound for Russia, she becomes entangled in a violent conspiracy that will eventually surface the secrets of her deceased husband. The setup is propulsive and cinematic - Russian oligarchs, the blinding wealth of Dubai, elite cosmetic surgery, and a protagonist who has nothing left to lose.

Maggie is the book's strongest asset. She functions as the novel's heartbeat - a woman who knows what it means to save lives and who must now save her own. There is genuine emotional weight to her grief and her attempts to reclaim purpose, and the collaboration between the two authors is most effective in this characterisation. Witherspoon brings an instinct for strong female leads and emotional depth, while Coben contributes his trademark layered plotting and whiplash-inducing twists. The balance between character warmth and plot velocity is the engine that keeps the pages turning.

And turn they do. The constant shifting of the plot makes it nearly impossible to predict what will happen next, and the authors never take their foot off the gas. Chapters are designed to flick the reader from scene to scene, each ending on a small cliff that encourages just one more. For anyone who enjoys forward momentum over literary subtlety, this is a book built for late nights and missed alarms.

Where it stumbles, though, is in the details. Some point-of-view changes feel inconsistent, and at least one supporting character comes across as half-baked, with murky details that never fully resolve by the final page. Certain elements feel underdeveloped, and a few moments that should land with force don't quite resonate as intended. Maggie's resourcefulness occasionally stretches credulity - she escapes situations that would give a seasoned action hero pause, and some revelations in the final act rely on convenient coincidences rather than earned narrative logic. There are familiar thriller tropes and plot conveniences that will bother anyone who scrutinises too closely.

The prose itself is a readable hybrid. At times the narrative voice leans toward an actor's sensibility - immediate, physical, with a keen sense for emotional beats. At other moments, the plotting fingerprints are unmistakably Coben - layered reveals, misdirection, and a taste for the dramatic. This blend mostly works, though the medical detail occasionally overwhelms, and the globe-trotting scope sometimes tips from thrilling into over-the-top territory.

A note on the audiobook: Witherspoon narrates Maggie herself, supported by a full cast including Chris Pine, and the production is excellent. It may actually be the ideal way to experience the story, adding an intimacy to the emotional crescendos that the page alone cannot replicate.

Gone Before Goodbye is not a quiet or subtle book, and it never pretends to be. It is a crowd-pleasing, high-octane thriller with a protagonist worth rooting for and enough twists to keep even seasoned genre readers guessing. If you can forgive the occasional implausibility and a few loose threads, it delivers exactly what it promises - and it does so with considerable style.