I wasn't pulled in to this book like I thought I would be, based on the blurbs and the reviews. I didn't really feel connected to the narrators or their predicaments.

Jonathan and Olive Flanagan say goodbye to Billie for the last time without realizing it when she leaves to go hiking on the mountain. After not being able to find her or any sign of her for the last year Jonathan and is finally able to get the ball rolling on getting Billie declared legally dead so that they can get a death certificate for her.

Olive doesn't believe her mom Billie is dead after she has visons of her when she is at school and doing various tasks. She feels as if her mother is still alive and Billie tells her in the visions to look for her. So Olive goes on a mission to find her mom with her best friend and comes upon several things that suggests she is alive.

While going through Billie's things to donate or give to Olive Jonathan finds things on her computer that are suspicious. So he takes her laptop to his friend to see if he can hack into the computer to see what Billie had password protected. After finding other questionable things that his wife left behind he starts to question what else Billie had to hide.

This book is a definite slow burn with twists and turns. This definitely wasn't a book that I stayed hooked enough to keep reading to the end. It was too much of a slow burn for myself. And I hate that because I feel like the story had so much more potential than that if showed in the 55% of the book that I read.

This book for me took too long to get to a point that I was absolutely hooked. I will definitely pick this up again at a later date!!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House for the early review copy!

There are a lot of layers to this book.

Billie Flanagan disappeared a year ago, only her boot was found leaving her husband and her 16 year old daughter to heal and grow. But just as they are about to declare Billie dead her daughter Olive starts having visions of her mother or are they just delusions from a seizure? Her father Jonathan decides to humor his daughter and look into some of her claims and what he finds leaves him reeling. Who was Billie? She certainly wasn't the woman he thought he knew is she really dead or did she really just leave them to start over again.

The answers to all these questions are answered as the layers are slowly peeled back even until the last page. I usually whip through books like this but this one while interesting seemed to take me longer to read. I think there was a lot of filler that could be paired down to get us where the author wanted us to be.

This book seems to be about family and what holds them together. The lies that create small tears in the fabric as it is woven together into a family and if you tell enough lies the fabric becomes weak and starts to tear and break down. The question is what to do next.

Olive seems like a typical teenager, angsty and upset that her mother is gone and troubled by these vision of her mother still being alive. Jonathan fell in love with a wild and adventurous woman who he is so afraid of losing he doesn't see the warning signs that something is very wrong. All the other characters orbit around these 2 in a messy way that sometimes seems forced and other times just seems out of place.

Overall this book was interesting and kept my attention. The ending was a bit of a surprise....but was it really? What did you think?

I thought that this was a pretty good premise for this book. However, I did tire of the father rather soon into my reading. I just did not connect with him at all. That being said, I'm not sure how I would act if my wife was missing for over a year and finding out all kinds of things about her that he did not know. Things in her past that were not even close to being revealed or told truthfully during their marriage that had been long enough to produce a teenage daughter.

Besides the missing mother and wife, there are other things going on in the book. Most of them having to do with the teenage daughter who is seeing visions and thinks her mother is still alive. These visions, after a while, lead the father and daughter to a mystery that was a shock to them both.

A decent read that includes some suspense that is, if you can get over some of the actions taken by the father.

Thanks to Random House and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Watch Me Disappear is (or maybe should be) a book about a marriage, a mother, and the lingering questions that follow a death. Truthfully, I wasn't interested in whether Billie was a master manipulator who ran away to reinvent herself or a woman with a checkered history who died in a freak hiking accident. I was most interested in Olive and Jonathan and their changing relationship as they navigated the grief of Billie's disappearance. If this were primarily a novel about the people left behind, it could have been a much stronger and more unique story.

Unfortunately, Watch Me Disappear can be lumped in with all the books that are trying to be the next Gone Girl. It comes close to addressing the complicated nature of female victimhood vs. agency that has become a common trope, but it doesn't add anything new or interesting to that conversation. The epilogue was absolutely maddening, and I think that this novel with an ambiguous ending would have been so much stronger. If I just hadn't read that last bit, this might be a 3 or 4 star rating.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advance copy of this novel.

A year after Billie's disappearance and her daughter and husband continue to grieve. Alhtough a body was never found she is presumed dead. Then Olive begins to have visions of her mother in which she seems to be encouraging her daughter to keep looking for her. In the meantime her father is in the process of having his wife declared dead. Is she?
Good pacing and plot development that keeps you guessing.


Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity of reading this egalley.

Watch Me Disappear is a must read. As a reader, I couldn't decide what I was hoping would happen...Olive would discover her mom was really dead, or Olive would discover that her mom purposely took off to escape her history. Loved every page in this book.

3.5/5

Let me start with this: This book was not what I thought it was going to be.

Sometimes I love when that's the case, but this one was not quite as engaging as I was hoping. This book focused more on family relationships, character flaws and family secrets. I was looking for more of a thrilling, suspenseful, can't-put-down atmosphere.

Now that I've focused on what you can't find here, let's focus on what you can. The book begins with Jonathan and his daughter Olive mourning the death of Billie (Jonathan's wife and Olive's mom). We learn early on that Billie is a deeply flawed character. She tries hard not to fit in anyone's box, and doesn't want to be normal. This is why Jonathan falls for her in the first place. However, Jonathan learns that perhaps Billie was not the person he thought he knew. Who was Billie exactly? Does anyone know? As far as Jonathan knows, Billie came from not-so-great beginnings and doesn't have ties to her family anymore. So Jonathan must also explore that side to her. She never really seemed to get close to anyone, except for Jonathan and her friend Harmony. Harmony has been the closest constant in her life since her college-ish days. I got some strange vibes from Harmony, and feel there was more to her story. The author wrapped her story up pretty quickly, but I felt she was one character who could've used a little more elaboration on.

Pretty quickly in the novel there is a lingering theme that maybe Billie isn't dead after all. But how could that be, and why would/how could she leave her daughter behind? We go on a emotional rollercoaster with Jonathan and Olive trying to workout Billie's secrets. There is a bit of an "out-there" storyline with Olive seeing visions of her mother, but it wasn't so out-there that it was distracting or kitschy.

While this wasn't the book I was looking for, it still turned out to be a solid first suspense novel for Janelle Brown. And can we talk about that dreamy cover art for a minute? Gorgeous.

Many thanks to the author, NetGalley, Random House and Spiegel & Grau for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This may even be a 5 Star...
I was totally engrossed in the story line. Mysterious with twists and turns it kept me guessing all the way until the end.
The ending though.....WHAT A SURPRISE!! I didn't see that coming!! Great writing.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It's hard not to think of Gone Girl while reading Brown's Watch Me Disappear.

But the good thing is that it isn't because of unoriginality.

It's as if she read Gone Girl, and whispered to herself... "oh no, this is awful. I can do much better than this."

And she did.

Watch Me Disappear unfolds creepily, but one is never dissatisfied. A highly recommended thriller with twists that don't make you roll your eyes.

After so many thrillers that focus on the wife, I thought it would be a good change to read one that focuses on the husband and child.

It was definitely unique to read this story with a husband and daughter as the main protagonists. I was hoping that the story would be more of a father-daughter search for the truth, where both characters grow. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The father's character and judgments were reasonable based on the secrets he was discovering about his wife, Billie. However, he didn't really do much about anything. He discovered things and let despair take him under. In fact, his daughter was much more active in getting to the bottom of things than he was. This ended up turning this book from an adult read to a young adult/teen read, which let me down a tad bit. In the end, this was a thriller that was interesting in terms of where the plot went, but I felt like it failed in its execution and character development.

When Billie disappears while hiking alone, her husband and daughter are left to pick up the pieces of what they thought they lives were about. Because of Jonathan’s speech at her funeral, he’s offered a book deal about his loving relationship with his wife. As he struggles to write it and awaits the court proceeding to declare her dead since there was no body, he begins to find some things out that he did not know about his wife. Their daughter Olive is struggling as well, with just being a teenager finding herself, the loss of her mother, and some visions she has. She is sure her mom is alive and trying to tell her to look for her. As more secrets unravel, these two will be on their own paths to the truth and hopefully to each other.

This story will definitely reel you in. The further I read, the more I didn’t like Billie at all and yet was drawn to her. You will wonder exactly what happened to her and there is some resolve in the end, so that was good. I love both Jonathan and Olive. They were both written with such depth and emotion. Both harboring their own way of grief and yet loving each other so much. That was obvious throughout. I think there were times I was thinking hmmmm and that kept me from giving it a full 5 stars but it is such a good read. It’s a great look at the love of a parent and the love for a parent. And it does ask the question, do we ever really no someone?

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review.

A sixteen year old's mom goes on a hike and vanishes. Where did Billie go? A year later, they still don't know where she went, but her daughter, Olive isn't going to give up. Now seventeen she still can't fathom this and thus they start to dig. What happened? Why? Did Billie just decide to disappear? Why would she do that? What secret(s) are being hidden? As the mystery unravels we follow along, caught up in the one answer everyone wants solved. Where is Billie Flanagin?

The author has a voice that's easy to read, and this book can be YA or adult. I found myself racing to find out the who, what, when, where and most of all, why?

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free volition.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this book one exchange for an honest review.

I actually started this book 4 months ago but for whatever reason it just didn't appeal to me at the time so I shelved it. I picked it back up this weekend and I couldn't put it down (must've been in a reading slump 4 months ago!). The plot is intense! I would be interested to see Janelle Brown's outline of this book because there are so many twists and turns and yet the plot is flawless. Every time I thought I had the book figured out the author tossed in something I didn't see and renewed my interest in the book (hence my lost Sunday!).

The characters in the book are very interesting too. I thought Brown did a very good job of making the characters come off as good/sympathetic but also humanly flawed people. You'll care about them even when they make bad decisions and that makes you want to reach for the book.

I highly recommend this book. It's great for a lazy Sunday when you have time to invest because once you pick this up you will not want to put it down. And yes, you do receive closure on her disappearance although I'll not spoil it here ;)

Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown develops a bit slowly in the beginning but quickly becomes an intriguing mystery about what happened to a Berkeley, CA housewife who had disappeared almost a year before, leaving her bereft husband and teen daughter in a strange kind of grieving limbo. Her body was never found, though a single hiking boot by a remote creek was, leaving little hope that Billie could still be alive.

As the details are revealed about who Billie was in her life before she disappeared on a solo hiking trip in the wilderness, a very strange picture emerges. Previously involved in radical environmental protests, then a wild singer in a band, it seems that the author is describing an entirely different character than the one who later fell in love and quickly settled down as a housewife and mother. And that is the point at the heart of this mystery: who was Billie, really?

As husband, Jonathan, and daughter, Olive, struggle each in their own way to make sense of what happened (or didn’t happen) to Billie, clues emerge that cause doubts for the characters, as well as the reader, about what actually did happen both leading up to and during that fateful hiking trip the year before.

Jonathan, a writer, has contracted to write a book about his experiences with his wife, based on an article he published. Excerpts from the book appear within the novel, intertwined with new discoveries about Billie. As his doubts about the woman he loved compound and build, his writing reflects his confusion. To top it all off, he is in a financial bind that is set to be resolved with the impending legal declaration of death after a year of disappearance, which will result in a substantial insurance-policy payoff.

Then there are teenage Olive’s apparent visions of her mother, which suddenly begin out of the blue and lead her to believe that Billie is still alive and in need of rescue. Her father, however, becomes more and more convinced that it is likely that Billie ‘disappeared’ herself and may even have been conducting a clandestine affair in the months leading up to her hiking trip. As father and daughter eventually begin communicating about their beliefs with each other, their relationship deepens and they begin trying to figure it out together, though still at odds with what they believe.

Although it may seem obvious at certain points where the story is headed, there are several surprises in store and one of them is revealed at the very end. I have very mixed feelings about the ending. Part of me wanted to know more details about the abrupt twist in perspective. It did seems to wrap things up, though, in a satisfying, if chilling manner.

The writing is very good throughout. I was a little frustrated with some aspects of the character and plot development. Some of the characters introduced in the book could have been fleshed out a bit more, starting with Billie’s long-time best friend, Harmony, whose motives are never really explained to satisfaction. As for plot, I was impatient at times because it seemed like the same things were happening over and over without adding a lot to understanding and eventual resolution.

I enjoyed this story overall and recommend it as a good summer read, in spite of some minor flaws. I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I could not get into this book. I had such high hopes for it but I was so bored. I did not finish it.

I enjoyed the mystery and intrigue of this book. The plot and characters were well developed and the web of mystery was pretty good. I was pretty sure she didn't for, but I didn't have the story completely figured out. I know the reasons she left her husband and daughter behind but it made me dislike her even more.

Billie Flanagan never returned from her solo hiking trip. Search parties found her shattered phone and one hiking boot, but no one knows exactly what happened to her out on the isolated trail. Her husband is writing a memoir of life with his wife, trying to deal with his grief and keep afloat until Billie is officially declared dead and he can collect on her life insurance policy. Their teenage daughter has started having visions of her missing mother. Those could be symptoms of a concussion. Or it could be that Billie wants to be found. This book had me literally holding my breath through the entire last chapter.

I would give this book a 3.5 star
I think the story is well presented and I like the characters as well. I was interesting to read how Bille's personality developed through out the book and how the image of her changed even to her family.
I wasn't crazy about the ending though, that's why I'm giving the book 3.5 instead of 4.

This is a pretty good thriller that focuses on a family left behind after a mother disappears while hiking. Not all is what it seems, and the book focuses on the father and daughter trying to unravel what really happened, and who the person they loved actually was.

It's pretty captivating and from very early on I was interested to find out what happened. There are a lot of twists and turns, and overall, I found myself pretty satisfied with it.