All I can say is WOW and that I'll be recommending it to everyone who likes a good twisty-turny tale.

Billy loving wife and mother disappears with only a hiking boot found. The many twists and turns, discovery of her life leaves you wondering "is she really alive"? The heartfelt ending is unforgettable.

I had a tough time putting this book down. Billie, a free-spirited wife and mother with a mysterious past, has disappeared while on a solo hike and her body never found. Her grieving husband Jonathan is writing a memoir about their life together to help himself heal. Their teenage daughter Olive has recurring visions of her mother who appears to tell her she is not dead. As the story unfolds, so do the secrets. Janelle Brown is a gifted writer and skillful storyteller and I will definitely be reading more of her work.

This book definitely held my interest! I didn't see it coming, so I feel that it was a good mystery. I enjoyed the writing style and definitely felt it was an intriguing story!

Exciting, thrilling mystery. As the one year anniversary of her presumed death approaches, Billie Flanigan's daughter and husband start to think that maybe she just disappeared instead of died in a hiking accident.
The evidence adds up ( or does it?) Billie went hiking on her own and never came out of the woods. Her boot and cell phone were found. No bank transactions, or any trace of her existence since that day in the woods. No body, but it could be anywhere. Her daughter and husband have different reasons for their doubts, and different approaches to the mystery.
This book kept me glued to the page. I just had to keep reading more to know what happened, and why. For fans of Gone Girl and the like.

This story follows a husband and a daughter who are reeling from the news that their wife/mother went on a hiking trip and never returned. Is she dead? Did she run? If so- why? The story slowly unravels the family's history, letting the reader begin to make their own assumptions about what happened. The author does a great job of making the story as fresh and surprising as she can, though the overall plot idea is fairly common. Overall the writing is great, but the plot wasn't gripping enough to make it a favorite.

This book kept me in suspense for the full 24 hours I read it and couldn't put it down. If you want a book that draws you in from page 1 with twists and turns this is the perfect pool read for you!

Watch Me Disappear is an extremely well written account of a family. The wife gets lost and is presumed dead after embarking on a hiking adventure by herself.. Jonathan and their daughter Olive are devastated. Jonathan quits his job to write about her, but the more he researches and talks to her friends, the baffled he becomes. Each chapter is very cleverly written by the different characters and you never know what is coming next!. A great read that I recommend.

Two and a half stars: If you are looking for a thriller, this isn’t it. Instead this is a book that once again examines the question of how well can you really know someone?

It has been a year since Billie Flanagan disappeared while hiking alone in the Desolation Wilderness. She left behind her husband, Johnathon, and seventeen year old daughter, Olive, who are still trying to face the fact that she must be dead after all this time. Then Olive starts having visions of her mother, and she becomes convinced that Billie is alive. Olive and Jonathon start digging to find the answers, and what they uncover paints a very different picture of the woman they thought they knew. Who was Billie Flanagan?
What I Liked:
*Watch Me Disappear is an interesting story. It is one that explores the question of how well can you know someone. If you haven’t yet read a novel that takes on this topic, it will be an engaging read for you.
*I was intrigued by the mystery surrounding Billie’s disappearance. I became convinced, like Jonathon and Olive, that perhaps she wasn’t dead. I liked following the clues the two uncovered, and trying to solve the mystery of whether or not Billie was dead or if she had disappeared. I was kept guessing until the end.
*I liked that Billie’s character kept evolving and changing. At first, she comes across in Jonathon’s memoir as a loving mother and wife, full of spark, vivacious energy and a non conformist spirit. Then, her image becomes tarnished as both Jonathon and Olive uncover the truth about her past. By the end, it goes to show the that you can never really know someone.
*I was excited by the strange mystery of Olive’s version in the first part of the book. Was there a supernatural force at work allowing her to see her mother, or was it something else?
*The ending has a couple of small twists, nothing that caught me off guard, I was expecting it. Still, I appreciated that the author provided the answers, and that the book concluded without any cliffhanger or unfinished story lines.
And The Not So Much:
*I think what put me off the most about this story was that I didn’t like or connect with any of the characters. Jonathon and Olive were okay, but I never really liked either one of them. Then there is Billie. The more I learned about her, the less I liked her, until by the end, I completely despised her. She was an egocentric person, and I couldn’t have cared less what happened to her either way.
*The book starts off interesting enough, but then it drags and drags until it reaches a boring finish. The author tries to throw in a twist at the end, but it was easy to see coming, and by then I just didn’t care.
*I hated the chapters that included bits of Jonathon’s memoirs about Billie. They served as points of reflection that had the reader questioning if you can really know someone. They changed in tone, but they still bored me.
*I expected this to be a thriller with exciting twists and turns, but it wasn’t. It is a rather straightforward, boring story about a bored house wife who disappears. Even the parts that were supposedly supernatural turn out to be something else. In the end, this was a total fizzle for me.

Watch Me Disappear was a book I picked up looking for a thrilling mystery. What I got was a fizzle. The story was okay, but I didn’t like any of the characters, especially Billie, the missing woman. By the time I got to the end, I just didn’t care anymore. If you are interested in reading this one, definitely borrow it from your library.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own, and I was not compensated for this review.
Posted@Rainy Day Ramblings.

I really enjoyed this book! Could not put it down and kept reading into the night. Very good characterization, 4 stars

This is a tight little "what's going on" missing person story. I sort of resent that it's labeled Women's fiction but that's my own issue with the world of publishing I guess. This is a story about a mom who does missing... or does she? Figuring out what is going on is the job of her husband and 15 year old daughter as the time runs out on being able to declare her legally dead. This story went more places than I expected it to and I appreciated having some somewhat unreliable narrators in there to help me get perspective on what I thought was going on. A lot of interesting ruminations about family and togetherness as well as some nostalgia stuff for 90s era radical Seattle that rang very true to me.

Watch Me Disappear is the story of a husband and daughter dealing with the missing of their wife/mother. The story so well written - such a page-turner that I had trouble putting it down. The characters are believable and the emotions evoked are real. It's reminiscent of Gone Girl, but in a much more satisfying way. A GREAT read - you'll be enthralled up to the last page!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Billie Flanagan disappears while on a solo mountain hike, leaving behind only a hiking boot. Her husband, Jonathan, and their teen-age daughter, Olive, are left to pick up the pieces of their lives after Billie’s disappearance. The story is written in third person perspective, alternating between Jonathan and Olive, and begins about a year after Billie’s disappearance. Interspersed throughout the book are chapters of the book Jonathan is writing about their lives together and the loss of the love of his life. But the search for the truth about Billie leads them in different directions, and there are twists and turns as the secrets they unearth only bring forth more questions. Who was the woman they lived with for all those years? How well can we really know someone? Is what we see in each other just a reflection of what we most want to see? Do we sometimes feel so ordinary that we buy, unquestioningly, someone else’s extraordinariness?

The character development in this book is complex, well-written and completely engages the reader. For their sakes, you really want to know what happened to Billie. You want Jonathan and Olive to have answers to help them straighten out their lives. There is enough mystery and twists thrown in that you remain engaged to the end. Along the way, you know nothing more than the characters do at that moment.

One word in this book pretty much sums up the whole of the story: weltschmerz. It’s introduced fairly early in the book, and was a new word for me. The definition is world weariness felt from a perceived mismatch between the ideal image of how the world should be with how it really is. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but that is the plot of the book and you will be captivated to the end. This isn’t a heart-pounding thriller, but it is a psychological character study that will draw you in completely. I’m going to seek out Brown’s other books and I recommend this one highly.

Not only is this book a mystery, but it is also a carefully crafted story about relationships. The characters are interesting and include: Jonathan who works hard because he believes that’s what a husband/father should do; Billie, his free-spirited wife who has thrown herself whole heartedly into being a mom after leaving her wild days behind; and Olive the daughter, who is growing up and and doesn’t rely on her mom like she did before. Billie is having a difficult time coming to grips with her daughter’s increasing independence.

The main story is interspersed with pages from a book that Jonathan is writing about his missing wife who is presumed dead. Jonathan starts by telling about how he met Billie, but as the book progresses, and he starts to loosen up, he reveals more and more about what their marriage was really like. Throughout the book, Jonathan explores what attracts someone to the person they marry, and how well can you really know that other person. The author did a nice job of looking behind the surface with the people in this book by showing a great deal of how the circumstances in their lives and their choices affected them.

There are many layers to this book, and I would recommend it to fans of mysteries and character studies.

A year ago, Billie Flanagan went on a hike alone and never returned, leaving her devoted husband Jonathan and teenage daughter Olive behind. Her body was never found. Olive begins having visions of her mother in which Billie asks Olive to find her. Jonathan is concerned about Olive and starts looking into Billie's past. He is surprised to find that Billie kept a number of secrets from him during their marriage, and he begins to think he didn't know her at all. Did Billie really die in a hiking accident, or did she stage her death in order to leave her family and begin a new life on her own?

I wasn't a big fan of the book. It was very slow paced. I had a lot of trouble with Olive's visions and her behavior. The revealing of Billie's secrets was somewhat interesting, but I just couldn't bring myself to really like any of the characters. I finished the book to find out what happened, but the whole book kind of fell flat for me. It wasn't the worst book I have ever read, but it was also nowhere near the best. I don't really feel like I would want to read another book by this author.

So this book took me way to long to read. The reason being is because I just didn't care enough about the characters. I thought Billie was a very selfish person, which made me not care to hear about her. Everyone loved Billie so much but she could just throw away anyone whenever she got sick of them. I had to finally sit down and finish the book and still I didn't like Billie and even more so at the end. I believe Olive and Jonathan are better off without Billie and their lives will be better not having her in it.

This book kept me wondering the whole way through! Was Billie dead or had just disappeared? A good twist at the end which i didn't see coming!

Billie disappears from her suburban, yoga training, family centered Berkeley life. It leaves her husband, and daughter Olive in limbo since they can't find her body. When Olive has visions of her mother asking to be found, she sets out on a quest that challenges everything she thought she knew about her mother. It's a good mystery that will intrigue many teen readers.

This book started out really strong and I was loving the emotional roller coaster ride the author was taking us on. The writing style and descriptions of relationships were beautifully written and very insightful. But a little after the half way point it all seemed to peter out and I was ready for the ride to be over long before I reached the end. 3 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

So sorry but this one just wasn't for me. Thanks for letting me try it.