This book started out slow, then really hooked me, then disappointed me at the end. Serious disappointment. I was completely hooked on the characters, and then the end left me feeling... blah. It was okay, not bad, but just blah.

Billie's boots found filled with water and sand.

I wanted to like it but this was like trying to read through water and sand, just moved too slow.

Billie--mother of Olive and wife to Jonathan--has been gone almost a year since she disappeared while hiking. Just before the court date to pronounce her dead, Olive begins having visions of her mother and thinks she is alive and in trouble.

The characters and story were interesting enough and the writing good, but the series of events and pieces of the puzzle, as they fell into place, didn't quite fit and left me unsatisfied.

Wow! What a great storyline! A woman's hiking shoe is found, but no body. A beloved mother and wife has gone in a solitary hike and is presumed dead. This is only the beginning. You will soon learn that no body is ever as they seem. Not a daughter, best friend, husband, or even anybody's past. While writing his memoirs of meeting his wife, a husband finds that the loving girl he married is not at all who he thought she was. Was she a dedicated mother or a terrorist? A faithful wife, or a cheat. A true friend, or enemy? Dead or alive. Incredible story, sure to keep you up reading till the last page. Sensational.
5 Stars

Wife and mother Billie Flanagan, disappears on a backpacking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail and is presumed dead. One year later, her husband Jonathan is waiting for the courts to issue a death certificate so that he can move one. Their daughter, Olive, isn’t so sure her mother is dead as she sees visions of Billie. Olive decides to search for her missing mother while her father begins to learn that his wife had some secrets from her past and starts to believe Olive. What a concept and it drew me in. I wanted to know about Billie’s secret past and whether she was alive or dead. The twists certainly has me surprised. I enjoyed this story but then I didn’t. It took me sometime after reading it and absorb to write my review. Can’t give away spoilers but I was deeply troubled by the end of the book.

Damn! When that's the last drawn out word uttered as you close a book, you know it's good. Janelle Brown pieces together the lives of this family with precision and expertise. Each character is flawed, human and reachable in their own right, and together make a family that's believable and unique. The plot twists and turns as you plunge and emerge once again, until the bitter end where you find yourself whispering "daayymmnn!"

This was an interesting missing person mystery. The cast of characters I did not find very likeable. At times the pace of the book was rather slow. However, it is a book I would recommend to those who are looking for an easy read mystery.

I can't say I heartily enjoyed this book, but it was entertaining. I'm not even quite sure what to say because it was a love/hate relationship. There are moments where I couldn't put it down and moments where I considered putting it down and never picking it back up. I understood that the author wanted to make a mystery, but it was to the point where the characters weren't consistent with themselves. I like the way it ended in a wrapped up package for the most part. Overall I liked it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends.

'Watch Me Disappear' had me riveted from page one. I found it to be a quick page-turner with complex characters and unexpected twists. While I thought I knew exactly where the book was headed, the ending surprised me twice. This is satisfying as both a family drama and a mystery, and will probably have a wide appeal. Well worth staying up late into the night to finish.

I received this book as a ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I love when you pick a book based on the description and it doesn't disappoint you. Better yet, it makes you stay up late reading because you want to find out what happens. This book delivered on all fronts.

Quick synopsis: Mom goes on a solo hike and doesn't return. Presumed dead. Dad and teenage daughter are struggling to cope and discover all things may not be as they seemed. Twists and turns ensue.

The author really captured the way a sudden death dramatically changes your life and how hard it can be to find your "new normal" especially when you begin thinking the person you lost isn't who/what you thought they were. The dad/daughter relationship and it's challenges felt very real to me and I wanted them to be OK in the end. Their reasons for searching may have been different, but they ultimately wanted the same thing. While I was able to figure out some of the plot twists, it kept me turning pages until the end.

I had a really hard time getting into this book and a hard time getting a feel for where it was going. At times it felt very supernatural (but it ultimately wasn't). At times it felt like a mystery (but it ultimately wasn't.)

In the end, it felt like more a study of family and the secrets we keep. That's a great premise for a book. But because I kept feeling like this was going to be a DIFFERENT book, by the time I figured out what it was really about I was kind of not into it anymore.

I liked that Billie was not an outright villain. She was just a self-absorbed liar and drama queen with daddy issues who was a pretty shitty mom. There are a lot of moms out there like that, so a book about why she's that way, how she got that way, and what it did to her family would have been more interesting to me than the "Where did she go" angle. Because the later teased that this be a bigger story than it ultimately ended up being.

So, not a bad book by any means. Some good writing. Interesting characters. My issues were more editorial in nature.

*SPOILERS* I had high hopes when I started reading this.... From the title alone the story had me expecting the tale of Billie's disappearance. I enjoyed the story, the layers of Billie unraveling. The emotions of both her husband and daughter were full of angst and yet and along I was checking the chapters to see how much longer until I would see where she would end up. Perhaps a title change would have changed my likely prediction of the ending - but then again, that was the intended idea, right?

Yes, yes, a fabulous book. I get the twists and turns of most books early on, as I did here. However, it was utterly irrelevant because the beauty was not so much in the presence of turns as in the way they were constructed and maneuvered, the how of their becoming in the path..

This is a Great book! A must read. Looking forward to more from this author, .I have told all my friend to read this book, move it to the top of your list

This was a lovely story, with strong and engaging characters. I particularly liked the father and the teen daughter - they came across as believable and their relationship seemed realistic. I did not care for the character of the mother, though the author held true to it through to the fairly expected end.

WATCH ME DISAPPEAR - Janelle Brown
Spiegel & Grau, a Random House imprint
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8946-5
ISBN ebook: 978-0-8129-8947-2
July 2017
Literary Fiction

California – The Present

In the prologue the reader meets Jonathan Flanagan, his beautiful and captivating wife Billie, and their daughter Olive at a Pacific Coast beach. Shortly they visit the nearby Monarch butterfly preserve. It is October and the migrating butterflies are settling in the preserve. This takes place shortly before Billie goes on a solo hike in the Desolation Forest and never returns. One year later just before the anniversary of Billie’s presumed death, Jonathon and Olive are still grieving and bewildered. The search for Billie found one of her hiking boots and her broken phone, but no body. Jonathan did what Billie encouraged him to do, which was leave his job at Decode Magazine, how he has successfully supported his family. He is now writing Where the Mountain Meets the Sky: My Life with Billie Flanagan, as a tribute to Billie. His agent has sold the book, but Jonathan is still writing it. His prediction of what might happen if he left his job has come true, and his finances are very tight. He can’t afford his daughter’s tuition, not until Billie is declared dead and he receives her life insurance payout, for which the determining court date is approaching.

Olive is walking the hall of the private girl’s school she attends when she feels slight off-kilter and sees her mother at the beach. Billie asks Olive why she isn’t looking for her. Olive takes this as a psychic message informing her that her mother is still alive. Can she make her father believe her? While Jonathon knows Billie had a bad childhood as her preacher father had molested a young girl, and then she runaway and got into some serious trouble involving ecoterrorism for which her former boyfriend went to prison, but she turned her life around. Jonathan and Billie met on public transportation, fell in love, and remain married for sixteen years. Billie took care of Olive while Jonathan became a workaholic. Now he works to re-establish his relationship with his daughter.

Obviously this story is about how Olive and Jonathan deal with Billie’s death, and it is told in present tense, which makes the reading somewhat different in feeling, and the story switches from Olive’s to Jonathan’s viewpoints. Excerpts of Jonathan’s memoir of Billie are also interspersed within the text.

Olive becomes convinced her mother is alive, and needs Olive to find her. This will lead Olive on a strange journey with an unexpected ending. Jonathan also takes a journey into discovering just who Billie really was after he becomes aware of incongruities in her past. This leads him down a trail of doubt and anger. As Jonathan and Olive both try to discover the truth about the mysterious Billie, the story surveys if anyone really knows someone else, even a loved one, and if anyone can accept the truth about that person’s true character. The story explores the vicissitudes in all human relationships from family to friends to strangers. Certainly readers will make judgements about different characters based on their behavior in the story. WATCH ME DISAPPEAR may start slow, but speeds up into a compelling mystery leading to an amazing finish.

Robin Lee

I was happy to have the opportunity to read an advance copy of Watch Me Disappear. This was my first novel by Janelle Brown. The book had an interesting premise, and I found the way the author handled the scenario interesting. I liked how the book evolved as new information became available to the father and daughter; it became suspenseful as one’s assumptions drastically changed. It was nice to follow the story from both the father and daughter’s perspectives. I was surprised by the ending. I enjoyed reading the book, but I would have eliminated some of the sub-plots related to the daughter. I found they distracted from the main plot without enhancing the book. I look forward to reading more books by Janelle Brown and recommend this one.

This book was not my typical read. I thought the description sounded interesting so I thought I would give it a try. I'm so glad I did!! I read a lot. I'm talking a couple of books a week. This book is at the top of favorite books​. The story weaves so many different scenarios. Just when you think you have figured it out...Nope! Try again. The story weaves past and present to tell a story of a mother's disappearance. The husband, daughter and friends all have their own story to tell. I simply could not put this book down! I thought I had it figured out and then I read the last line. Boy was I off base!

A woman goes on a solo hike through California mountains and disappears. A year later her husband and teenage daughter begin to investigate her background, good and bad, and learn who she is and was. The investigation goes through many twists and turns ultimately leading to a very logical conclusion. Good weekend reading. Thanks to Net Galley and Spiegel & Grau for an ARC for an honest review.