Engaging: Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown

Review by MK French

Billie Flanagan, a former radical, had become a Berkeley mother with some need for freedom. She had started hiking and backpacking by herself on weekends, so it wasn't unusual for her to go away, until she didn't come back at all. A year later with no contact, the courts are ready to declare her dead. Her daughter Olive starts having visions of her, and her husband Jonathan is trying to write a book about his marriage as a way to cope with his grief. Both start feeling that Billie is still alive and try to search for her.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

July 2017; Spiegel & Grau; 978-0812989465
ebook, audio, print (368 pages); women's fiction

I found the book difficult to get into at first. It's not that Olive or Jonathan are hard to get to know, but it felt like the distance they had from each other also affected me as a reader.

As they started diving into their separate searches for Billie that they were more approachable and engaging. The story really took off at that point, and that's where I lost track of time and pages read.

Billie becomes more fleshed out as Olive and Jonathan discover different sides to her than they knew, and it alters how they see the relationships they had. It remains a mystery about what had happened to her until the very end, part of which made the story so engaging.

People aren't who they initially seemed to be, and relationships completely changed by the end of the book.

Overall, it's a great book, fast paced emotionally as the mystery unfolded.

Buy Watch Me Disappear at Amazon

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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