The story of a father and daughter learning to accept and live with the disappearance of their mom/wife. Seemed a bit slow at times, but I felt that fit the story and gave me time to digest, question and think how I would feel, what I would think and how I might respond in the same situation. Enjoyed it.

A great suspense/mystery. A real page turner. We follow Olive and her dad Jonathon. It has been a year since mom Billie disappeared in a hike and assumed dead. Now, Olive begins having visions of her mom while Jonathon uncovers information that suggests Billie isn't who she seemed. What was she doing in the year or two before her disappearance and is she really gone? These questions will keep you hooked until the very end.

This novel did not work for me. It had some real potential, but it felt far too dissipated - like it was trying to drive in so many different directions at once that it went nowhere - and it took its sweet time doing it, too! I had to give up reading it about eighty percent in because it had become such a chore to read. It was far too dismal and never even seemed like it was interested in going anywhere. In the end I really didn't care what had happened to the mother and wife of this family. I really didn't.

The novel starts at almost a year from the point where "Billie" Flanagan went hiking and was never seen again - unless you count one lone hiking boot as a sighting. Her daughter, Olive and her husband, Jonathan, are barely holding it together. Olive starts seeing visions of her mother and after the first of these is so convinced her mom is right there, that she runs into a wall trying to get to her, and all but knocks herself out. I started pretty quickly hoping she would do it again and end up in a coma so I didn't have to deal with her any more.

Jonathan was no better. He never saw his daughter when mom was alive because he worked all hours. This begs the question as to who was raising Olive since mom was evidently always gone as well. Once mom was gone for good, Jonathan quit his job to spend time with Olive, but then he had no money, so they were living hand to mouth.

He got an advance to write a memoir of Billie, but we were never given a single reason why anyone would want to read it or why any publishing company would be remotely interested in a memoir about a woman who was very effectively a non-entity. The advance has been spent, and there's no prospect of more until the memoir is finished, but he's never depicted as actually working on it. In short, he's a truly lousy dad.

The story chapters are interspersed with "excerpts" from this memoir, but I have zero interest in story-halting flashbacks, because well, they halt the story, so I read none of the excerpts. I can't say I ever felt like I needed to go back and read them, which begs the obvious question as to why they were even there in the first place.

Olive's visions were so unrevealing of anything of value that the point of them was a mystery to me. They were all so vague and useless that they became simply annoying in short order. Any sympathy I had for her over her lousy parents was quickly smothered by her endless needy self-importance and habit of constantly and tediously regurgitating her situation for everyone and anyone who would listen.

There's talk that she might have a brain lesion which could explain the visions; then there's talk that maybe that's not the case; then there's talk that the pills she's given are stopping the visions, so maybe they were caused by the lesion, but one of these visions came before she hit her head. Seriously? Which is it? It was never explained and I couldn't stand to keep reading this stuff in the hope that maybe some straight-talk would come out of this story in the last twenty percent when there's been zero evidence of it in the first eighty!

I honestly did not care about any of these people at all, and I really could not have cared less about what had happened to Billie. The blurb (and I know this isn't on the writer, but the publisher) says of Billie that she's "a beautiful, charismatic Berkeley mom" and I have to ask yet again, what the fuck her 'beauty' has to do with anything? Would it have been somehow less of a tragedy had she been plain or even ugly? Would this family's loss have been easier? "Yeah, mom's vanished without a trace, but she was an ugly bitch, so who cares? Let's move on!" No, I don't think so.

Seriously, I am so tired of women being reduced to 'a pretty skin', like they haven't a damned thing to offer other than their beauty or lack of it. That sexist blurb writer should be fired for that blurb. If the novel had been about a man who disappeared, would the blurb have harped on how handsome he was? No! You're damned right it wouldn't. 2017 and we're still mired in this swamp: that a woman better equal beauty or she equals nothing.

I left this observation until last because it has nothing to do with my judgment of this novel. Normally, I pay little attention to the covers because they have nothing to do with the writer, unless the writer self-publishes. It's what's between those covers which interests me, yet you can't ignore the blurb because this is our lead-in to whether a particular novel might be of interest.

That said, I also have to bring the writer to book on this same score, because she also reduces women - particularly Billie - to skin-depth on far too many occasions:
"Billie was beautiful..."
"...Billie's mother would have been beautiful too..."
...her mom was the most beautiful, most creative, the most interesting..." - note how beauty is listed first since it's quite evidently the most important thing about her!
"...being beautiful and strong..." - being a beautiful woman is more important than being a strong woman!
"...being married to a beautiful woman is that other people are going to notice that she is beautiful..."
"And while Billie was more beautiful..."
"You're a beautiful woman."
"...His beautiful wife.."
"...Olive's beautiful mother..."
"Billie, tanned, glowing, and beautiful..."
"This beautiful girl from nowhere..."
So maybe the blurb writer took their cue from the interior after all? Not that they shouldn't have known better. What's just as bad though, is that Olive is compared with this ridiculous standard, and negatively so: "...she's not beautiful, like her mother...", and "She is not conventionally beautiful...." This is sick. I'm sorry, but it is.
If the novel had been about runway models or women competing for a role in a movie or a TV show, then I could see how beauty would play into it. It would still be wrong, but it's the way Hollywood is; however, that doesn't mean that writers have to buy into it so readily. It's diseased writing to keep harping on this for page after page. It's a form of abuse. People who do this have no idea how much damage they do to women the world over by repeating this insane mantra that all that's important is looks, and if you ain't got 'em you ain't got nothin' worth having. Bullshit.

This novel ought really to be condemned on that alone, but sick as this world is, negatively reviewing a book for that would fall on deaf ears. As it was, this novel condemned itself in too many other ways.

Amazing story. Just when you think you have a handle on things, the book shows you how wrong you can be. The characters feel very real, especially Olive. Janelle Brown managed to capture the spirit of a 16 year old girl and put it on paper. I will be putting this book in the hands of everyone I know.

I received an advance copy of this book via Netgalley. And once again, I really should know by now not to pick up a new book so close to bedtime.......

A middle-aged Berkeley (California) wife and mother is missing after a solo hike in the mountains. No body was ever found, only her smashed cell phone and a single hiking boot, and she is thus presumed dead. As her husband and teenage daughter try to rebuild their lives and cope with their devastating loss, the daughter starts to have waking dreams/visions/hallucinations of her mother, leading her to hope that somehow, somewhere, her mother is still alive and wants to be found.

This is a complex story with many twists and turns, surprises and unexpected directions. To say much more than this would involve spoilers, and I don't want to do that. Suffice it to say I can highly recommend this book for those who like twisty plots. You won't be disappointed.

Had me fooled, as a good mystery should. All evidence pointed to a nefarious act by Billie, (as the wife is known) leaving a husband and daughter devastated. As her background is peeled away layer by layer the hubby discovers he did not know his wife of many years as well as he thought he did. Add in some psychic visions by the daughter, which are misdiagnosed by a doctor, misunderstood by many, and mistaken in their meaning but suspicion arousing enough to lead to further sleuthing. Like pulling a loose thread that slowly unravels the entire garment further investigations lead to the likely location of the errant spouse and her alleged lover. A knock on the door of the suspected love nest reveals Billie’s family really did not know of her past, what an act. I have no hesitation recommending this book or giving it a five-star rating.

Billie Flanagan has been missing for almost one year and presumed dead. She disappeared while hiking on her own through Desolation Wilderness. The only clue left behind was one of her hiking boots. Billie leaves her husband Jonathan and teenage daughter Olive behind. Jonathan and Olive cope with Billie's disappearance in different ways. Olive starts to become withdrawn and distant, while Jonathan drinks more and decides to write a memoir about his love for Billie. Olive begins to see visions of Billie and is convinced she is alive somewhere needing help. At the same time Jonathan starts to doubt Billie's death after discovering mysterious details on her laptop computer. Jonathan starts to realize that he never really knew the "love of his life" and begins to wonder if she ran off with a mystery lover to start a new life. As the one year anniversary of Billie's disappearance draws near, and the court date to declare Billie dead, Jonathan and Olive have to come to a decision about whether to move on without Billie or continue searching for her.

This book kept my interest just enough to keep reading. It seemed to move really slow at some parts. Just when I was getting bored something would happen to get me to keep reading. It took me awhile to feel like I knew the characters, I would have liked more description in the beginning of the story. I liked and appreciated the ending and felt it worked well with the story. The only bothersome fact I couldn't get over was the fact that Billie had apparently taken out (over a period of time) close to $20,000 without Jonathan noticing. Yet, after Billie's death he had a hard time paying for Olive's tuition. I feel like he would have noticed that money missing if he was that close to not being able to pay tuition. Just a small detail that bugged me.

A mystery set within a narrative framework of drama and unfortunately, the two cancel each other out in terms of pace, suspense and impact. A woman's disappearance is eventually investigated when her daughter is unable to let the tragedy go and spurs her father into an unexpected journey leading to lackluster events - where "not all is at it seems". Although this fictional trend is hot nowadays, the formula has been well used in other stories and is starting to show its age.
Janelle Brown's prose is polished and fluid and when she's not absorbed in description, can draw you in close to a character's internal world. They reach a level of complexity that make them interesting to a point, but the author spends too much time in a character's space than I care to know, when I would much rather know what happens next. After all, we're investigating a disappearance, where the story's momentum is key in keeping the reading glued to the page.
Oddly, I recommend the author, just not this story.

WATCH ME DISAPPEAR BY JANELLE BROWN
Billie, her daughter Olive and Jonathan are a happy family. That is until Billie takes off for a solo hike and doesn't return. Billie is a free spirit and she has done this kind of thing before. For only a few days and she would always come home. There have been search and rescue personal searching everywhere on Desolation Mountain and the only item to be retrieved is one of Billie's hiking boots filled with water and sand. Jonathan picks up Olive everyday from school but he has a hard time talking to Olive.

A year has just passed since Billy disappeared. Jonathan is anxious to get the death certificate filled out. Then one day Olive has a striking visitation from her mother. Is this a hallucination? Is Olive psychic? It happened while Olive was in school--she sees her mother standing on a beach in a white gauzy dress. Something her mother would never wear? Olive thinks she is really seeing and talking to her mother. Billie asks Olive why she isn't looking for her? Why don't you try to find me?

Olive tells her father Jonathan that she saw her mother and she spoke to her in a vision. Jonathan thinks Olive had a hallucination since it is the one year anniversary since her mother went missing. He worries for Olive's mental health.

"Dad. Remember when you once told me about the importance of journalists keeping an open
mind? Of --objectivity?"
"No, I don't, but yes that's true."
"OK. Lay it on me."
"I don't think Mom's dead,"
"Just listen to me. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I saw her."
"Olive. I see her all the time, too. Any time I pass someone on the street with hair like hers,
I do a double take. Women who walk like her, or are wearing hiking gear, or have her profile.
Every single time, there's a second when I'm convinced that it's really her. But it never is."
"No, Dad, that's not what I meant. Listen. I saw her, but I didn't see her in person, exactly.
More like a vision? Dad, don't look at me like that. Seriously. OK? I had this whole convers-
ation with Mom this morning. She just appeared on this beach, wearing a dress..."
"I'm confused. You were at the beach today?"
"No, Dad."
"I was at school, and I started feeling strange, and then ...it's hard to put into words. But
essentially I looked up and I was on a beach, and Mom was there with me and she told me
to come find her."
"Come find her,"
"Yes! See? She was alive. She is alive."

I don't want to ruin your reading experience by saying anything more. There is a lot more that happens. This really begs the question who are our family, really?

Thank you to Net Galley, Janelle Brown and Spiegel & Grau for providing me with my digital copy in exchange for a fair and honest review..

The author's descriptive writing style is very readable and flows along nicely. While I'm sure others will most likely enjoy the story'; for me, something was off in the characters and I couldn't get interested in reading about them.
Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

This was such a unique story filled with interesting characters and lots of mystery.

Once you lose your grip, you just seem to slip away.

And this one seemed to drop into a deep abyss for me.

Watch Me Disappear is the story of Billie Flanagan, wife and mother, who takes off unexpectantly on a backpacking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail in the Desolation Wilderness. Billie is hiking solo and hasn't given her family much of a heads-up. No explanation. No itinerary. No discussion. Full stop.

Jonathan, her husband, has been caught up in the weight of his job commitments and has hardly lifted his head to even gaze in the direction of his family. Olive, their sixteen year old daughter, attends a very pricey prep school and is overwhelmed with fitting in. But this complacency is soon shattered when Billie goes missing. Billie's car remains at the trailhead and all that the searchers find is one of Billie's boots.

Fast forward and the one year anniversary of Billie's disappearance is approaching. Jonathan is awaiting the court's renderence of a death certificate. But Olive is not fully buying into the idea that her mother must be dead. In fact, she's having strange visions of Billie trying to contact her. She takes it upon herself to search for the missing Billie. Eventually, she ropes in her father. What they find together leaves a trail of massive question marks.

Sounds like all the makings of a sensational novel. It was until it wasn't any longer. Watch Me Disappear seemed to be aimed more towards a YA audience. The situations and plot designs came off as contrived and forced. There was always an answer for everything and that same everything at the end was explained to the nth degree. Each character seemed to live in their own personal bubble. Denial was served morning, noon, and night.

Janelle Brown can write. She drew me in. Here's hoping that the next book will not be so caught up in tightly structured plot devices. There's talent here that needs to shine.

I received Watch Me Disappear through Net Galley for an honest review. My thanks to Random House and to Janelle Brown for the opportunity.

I really enjoyed this story! The characters are interesting and complex, with a great storyline and things happening to all characters that pushed me to keep reading. A woman is missing, presumed dead,although no body has been found. The story involves her husband,daughter and friends as they try to continue life without her. The stories told by old friends and things found on her computer surprise her husband ,while her daughter starts to 'see' her in little hallucinations, making the daughter,Olive, start to believe that she is psychic. There are many changes the family goes through, as many things about the mother,Sybilla, are found of which her husband and Olive had no idea. I was feeling good about the direction of the story as I came to the end, then BAM, the truth is told which saddened me quite a bit! The author does a nice job of keeping your interest and the story flowing. I would like to thank Netgalley, the author Janelle Brown, and publisher Random House for an ARC of this book enabling my review.

Watch Me Disappear is Janelle Brown's newest novel, due for release in July 2017. This is the first book I've read by this author and I definitely look forward to reading more.

Billie Flanagan, a Berkeley, California wife and mother, vanishes while out hiking alone. Nearly a year after her disappearance, her husband Jonathan and 15 year old daughter Olive both struggle to come to terms with her apparent death. Jonathan quits his job as a tech writer to begin a memoir about their marriage while Olive tries to get on with her life at private school. One day Olive is suddenly confronted with a vision of her mother urging her to come find her. Can it be she is still alive after all?

While this book started a bit slow, it picked up quickly and I soon became completely invested in Olive and Jonathan's search for answers. Billie's life turns out to be a multi-layered puzzle and I found myself turning the pages faster and faster to try to get to the end to learn what happened to her. I wasn't disappointed; loved the ending.

Thank you to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau/Random House for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was mesmerized by this book and was so amazed with the entire story. The characters were so complex and unforgettable. Totally engrossing. Can't wait to read her other books.

Great read!
The story kept me engaged.
The characters are well developed.
There are always things that we do not know about our significant others.

Billie has an almost perfect life with her husband Jonathan and their daughter Olive. The problem is, Billie has always been a free-spirit and she is feeling trapped in her life. She goes hiking alone in Desolation Valley and never comes back down the mountain. The only thing searchers found was one of her hiking boots near the falls. Presumed dead, Jonathan is trying to carry the weight of being a single dad and sole provider for his teenage daughter. Then questions surface and doubts begin to creep in..... is Billie really dead or did she stage her disappearance to escape her confining life? This book will keep you guessing until the very end.

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I really enjoyed this. For once, the plot twists were decent.

Review copy provided by publisher.

WATCH ME DISAPPEAR begins almost a year after the disappearance of Bille (Sibilla) Flannagan. Through the novel, the lives of her teenage daughter and husband weave the story of their current lives and life before Billie died. Her daughter, Olive, begins having visions of her mom. Her husband, Jonathan, struggles to write a memoir and keep the household together. He knew some details of his wife's past, but not quite enough. When Olive becomes confinces that her mother is still alive, the two, for varied reasons, together and separately, search for the what really happened after Billie hiked off alone for a weekend.

The story line twists and turns, threading into loose ends of their lives, of the present, and of the past. Are Olive's visions a psychic ability, or the result of a brain bruise? Did Jonathan really know his wife? by the end of the book, we know all this and more. Some of the twists were quite obvious, others not as much. All in all an entertaining read.

With thanks to the publisher, Spiegel & Grau, and the author, Janelle Brown, for the advanced Reader Copy.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect once I started reading. I felt it a little slow at the start and I had already read a book this year surrounding a widower dealing with his teenage daughter and what happened to wife & mom. However, this is one you don’t want to abandon. As I started reading more, Watch Me Disappear takes on a completely different tone than I was expecting. Did she? Didn’t she? Part Gone Girl, part I Liked My Life, Janelle Brown definitely keeps you guessing. And right when you think you know all the answers, she throws you a curveball. Once you get into the suspense of this book, you won’t be able to put it down. You will need to know what happened to Billie Flanagan.