Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

"A beautiful Berkeley mom with a radical past vanishes while hiking, leaving her family to piece together her secrets, in this keenly observed novel for readers of Emma Straub and Maria Semple--from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything"--

"Billie is a beautiful Berkeley mom with a radical past--a teenage runaway from Northern California who took up with a group of environmental activists wanted by the FBI, lived dangerously, but when she meets Jonathan, a tech magazine editor and all around good guy, she settles easily into the life of an eco-conscious, stay-at-home suburban yoga mom. Their daughter Olive, under her mother's watchful gaze, becomes a lovely, introverted, slightly eccentric girl. As she reaches adolescence and needs Billie's full-time attention less, Billie throws herself into extreme sports--marathons, scuba diving, rock climbs, solo hikes. On one of these expeditions, Billie vanishes from the trail--only a hiking boot is found. The family is devastated--a year of intense mourning passes in which they await the closure that a body and a death certificate will bring. Jonathan drinks; Olive grows remote. But then she starts having waking dreams--hallucinations?--in which her very vibrant mother urges the girl to look for her, and Olive begins to believe her mother is still alive and in trouble. Jonathan believes the trauma and anxiety of losing her mother is making Olive ill, until he uncovers a secret that compels him to consider that Billie may not be dead after all and sends him on his own quest for the truth--about Billie, their marriage, and the things people do in the name of love."--

• ISBN10: 0812989465
• ISBN13: 9780812989465
• Publish Date: 11 July 2017
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Imprint: Spiegel & Grau
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[chymerra]

How well do we actually know the ones we love? If they had secrets that came out after their death, would they totally change the way that we looked at that person or would we just shrug and say “That was just like so and so“. Watch Me Disappear explores those questions in-depth.


Watch Me Disappear is a very well written book about finding out secrets about your loved ones and how those secrets can change how you see your loved one. While the book got off to a very slow start, it more than made up for the first slowness throughout the book. When you learned one thing about Billie and thought it was over with another secret comes to light. Then with all the issues with Olive and Jonathan were having after Billie’s death, the book was very flushed out.

Jonathan, I felt awful for. He was destroyed when Billie went missing on a solo hike. It took him months to even begin to deal with her death. He was struggling to connect with Olive, who had withdrawn after her mother disappeared, and he was struggling to make ends meet. So when his lawyer explained that to legally declare Billie dead, they needed to post an ad in the paper, he wasn’t very happy about it. It was during that time that he found her laptop. It was what he found when he started looking into the laptop that threw him for a loop and made him ask himself this question “Did he even know who Billie was?” The more he found out about her, the more he asked himself that question. He also began to question if she really did die out in the wilderness. Instead, he began to think that maybe, just maybe, she faked her death.

Olive, I also felt awful for. Not only did she miss her mother desperately, but she was starting to see visions of her. The first vision that she saw Billie in was at school and caused Olive to walk into the wall. Olive, desperate to find her mother, starts to search alternative methods to explain the visions that she was having. Olive was so sweet and I wanted to cry when she was searching and she was also finding out that her mother was someone who she didn’t know. I wanted to reach through the book and give her a hug.

I was not expecting the ending. Sure, I was expecting the 1 year later scene, with Olive and Jonathan happy and successful. But what I wasn’t expecting and it kinda blew my mind. You need to read the book to find out what I am talking about.

How many stars will I give Watch Me Disappear: 4

Why: A solid mystery that had a great plot and good characters. Even the flawed ones you couldn’t help but like.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Language and sex

**I received a free copy of this book and volunteered to review it**