Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for a free ARC.

Ugh. I really wanted to like this book. It had a great idea that just ended up being very unrealistic for me. I mean I love Ashley Flowers but I'm not going to just get up and quit my life to randomly try and find her. Sorry, not sorry. Maybe I'll try it on Audio when/if it comes out. That might be a better experience if it has different narrators.

If I Disappear is a unique novel about a woman named Sera who goes on a search to find a missing podcast host named Rachel. Sera recently lost a baby and got divorced. She listened to a true crime podcast for hours and hours and when the Rachel appears to have gone missing, Sera goes on a mission to find her. She gets in her car and just goes to the town where Rachel and her family lived and starts working for her parents. The premise of this book pulled me in and it wasn't like anything I read before. I did find the main character to be a little annoying at points and she was just...well....weird. The town was definitely creepy as were most of the people that lived there. The book held my attention as I wanted to find out what happened but I have to say I was disappointed by the ending, I wanted more closure. Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sera's lost her husband, her job, her baby. Now all she has left is her favorite true crime podcast: Murder, She Spoke. However, when the host Rachel mysteriously stops uploading episodes, Sera takes it a upon herself to travel to her small hometown and begin unraveling clues.

First things first, I’ve got to point out how gorgeous and fitting the cover is! It depicts a woman being peeled back to reveal the blackberry brambles behind her, and its surrealist body horror is what first drew me to the book in the first place.

The author paints Sera's obsession well. However, this obsession is so all-consuming that it leaves little room for definable characteristics outside of the narrator’s obsession with true crime and Rachel. This makes her a bit one-dimensional and I wish that she and the rest of the characters had been fleshed out more.

Overall though, this book is a delicious slow burn with twists and turns. As I was reading along, I found myself having a lot of fun guessing and wondering: is Sera going mad ... or is she onto something here?

In a world of social media and parasocial relationships, this is a timely mystery with a chilling end, perfect for true crime podcast lovers. I can't wait for the TV adaptation that’s currently in development as well!

A creepy and fast read about a concerned fan who dives deep into the world of her favorite true-crime podcaster after the podcaster stops updating. Sera makes her way to the host's family guest ranch and bluffs her way into a job in the hopes of finding out what happened to the podcaster. The longer she is there the more unsettling and unpleasant the other occupants of the ranch and the nearby town reveal themselves to be. This unreliable narrator definitely has issues, and she continuously makes decisions (or let things just happen) in a way that makes the reader want to scream at her. At least this reader! Yet I still found myself rooting for her - and the ending was definitely spooky and unexpected!

Sera is obsessed with the “Murder, She Spoke” podcast, so when the host, Rachel, goes missing, Sera wants to find her. Sera goes the ranch where Rachel lived with her parents, gets hired for a job there, and starts her search with the tips she learned from Rachel’s true crime podcast. A reading of the synopsis of If I Disappear will draw readers in, but the execution of the plot is lacking. Sera’s motive, or lack thereof, is not believable. She is not a writer or a detective; she is just an obsessed fan who steps into the life of the woman she admires, and the other characters just let her do it. Ultimately, the idea of this novel is better than the disappointing character development and unsatisfying ending.

If I Disappear was a clever novel that was very timely and on-point with the ever growing community of true crime podcasts and the listeners obsessed with the stories unfolding, only now a listener has inserted themselves into solving the mystery. Exceedingly original and highly enjoyable.

Sera is having a hard time in life, divorced, recently broken up with a boyfriend, no job and disconnecting with her friends. She becomes obsessed with true crime, especially her favorite podcast hosted by Rachel. Sera feels like she knows Rachel, that they could be friends if they ever met. When Rachel disappears, Sera begins searching for her. Sera finds herself working for Sera's parents at a ranch in a remote area where Rachel lived. Sera's parents seem to want to isolate Sera from the locals. Many of the locals warn Sera away from the ranch plus many of them seem suspicious. Will Sera ever find Rachel and will she be alive or dead? I love how each chapter has an excerpt from a true crime podcast and I can hear my favorite podcaster reading it in their voice.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the eARC of If I Disappear by Eliza Jane Brazier in exchange for my honest review.

True crime stories are all the rage. But what if the podcaster herself goes missing, would anyone look for her? Sera is determined to do so when she assumes that her favorite true crime podcaster has gone dark. Leaving everyone and everything behind, she finds the ranch where Rachel was last seen. She begins to ask questions and finds herself unraveling with uncertainty, and possibly even in danger.

If I Disappear draws the reader into a solid mystery. Unreliable narrator? Isolated setting? Small town mystery--with everyone suspect? Check yes to all of the above. This book will leave you wondering...who can you really trust?

The premise of this book was very intriguing, but the execution was not what I'd hoped. I found the main character to be confusing, creepy, and extremely repetitive. Her connection to the supposedly missing podcast host felt tenuous at best, and she definitely came off like a stalker. This would have worked really well as a short story, but felt circular and boring until the last few chapters.

I contemplated how to begin a review on this book. Can’t say this book compared to anything I have read before with this kind of twist. I finished it and thought is there a cheat sheet to what happened? The twist will keep readers coming back for more from this author. It isn’t your typical psychological thriller. The narrator, Sera, is a fan to a missing person podcast hosted by Rachel who has disappeared now. Sera becomes obsessed with finding her and takes on a ranch hand job at Rachel’s parents’ farm without their knowledge of her mission. Everyone becomes a suspect of whodunnit even the townspeople appear guilty. She continues to search even with warnings and threats to leave, but she feels since she is Rachel’s #1 fan she owes it to her. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book. I think this one is going to be a best seller.

This was an original, atmospheric, mystery/thriller that really kept me guessing and feeling many many feelings. The overarching theme of disappearing women - how women who are more introverted and quiet might not be missed because they keep to themselves and have fewer friends, and if they aren't missed, what does that say about our society? If women reporting women missing gets a "they probably ran away" "you sound crazy" "she was troubled" response, it's upsetting and infuriating, but that I'm not surprised says a lot about the way of the world. This sense of the ease in which a woman can simply vanish in a small, isolated town added an enormous amount of atmosphere to the book, along with the sense of isolation that the ranch setting gives and the constant feelings of being watched and told not to leave.

The book is told in first person by Sera, a woman obsessed with a crime podcast about missing women, convinced the podcast host has succumbed to the same fate of the vanished. She is desperate to connect to Rachel, the podcast host, and she thinks she knows her better than anyone in real life. This device of using a podcast as the spark for the story was really clever and tapped into something so true about today's world of technology and constant streaming stories - listeners and lurkers feel like they personally know those "influencers" and confessional podcast hosts, to a potentially dangerous degree. What happens when the crime podcast saturation makes detectives of us all?

Sera is a bit of an unreliable narrator, at times. You get a vague sense of her past, but the vagueness adds an element of mystery and distrust that I think was needed to believe she could just leave her life behind and start working on an isolate ranch outside a small town.

She starts asking questions, and townsfolk bristle, gossip, watch ... You can really trust no one.

I read lots of thrillers, and this plot felt slightly trite to me. The fascination with podcasting and crime stories in the US is definitely showing up in thriller literature now, and I'm not sure how well it works.

A podcast brings a broken young woman to an isolated ranch. Sera has found solace in a true crime podcast after the end of her marriage and loss of her baby. But when the podcast stops and the host, Rachel's social media does as well, she fears something has happened to her, like the women she investigates. Sera goes to Rachel's small town, and her parents' isolated ranch, to find clues as to where Rachel went. But the longer she is there, the more paranoid and strange Rachel's family seems and the more in danger Sera is in...

There are so many twists, I wasn't sure who it was going to be in the end, thinking I'd figured it out, only to be surprised time and again. Mystery fans are going to enjoy this story with a trendy premise.

This was an interesting book that I'm not entirely sure what to think of. The ending felt a little odd, perhaps a bit too sudden and vague, and I'm still not completely sure I understand what happened. However, the writing style was very interesting and I was drawn into the story from the beginning.

Being a fan of mystery novels and of true crime podcasts, this book sounded right up my alley. I was so excited to get sucked into Sera's world and find out what happened to Rachel. But I just never felt that "gotta find out" experience a good thriller or mystery should give you. The end felt like just another event in the story, rather than puzzle pieces falling into place. It wasn't bad, but this genre has a lot of great novels and If I Disappear just didn't hold up.

I like the plot of this book. As an avid true crime podcast listener, this book was really up my alley. The first person narrative was difficult to follow and track and times. But overall I liked the book.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Sera becomes obsessed with a true crime podcaster who goes missing. She leaves her life behind and goes searching for clues behind the other woman's disappearance.

This is a raw novel with lots of unexpected plot twists.

The beginning of If I Disappear was slow for me, but I persevered and got sucked right into a thriller. The bleakness of the narrator's life makes for a perfect motivation to go off on an illogical trip to find a missing podcaster named Rachel. The more Sera learns about Rachel the more she's drawn into the story and certain that she will be able to find her. Once she arrives at Rachel's home and gets a job and cottage under false pretenses, things get creepy, fast. Enough twists and turns to keep you up reading late at night with an ending I never saw coming!

I loved the podcast element of this book. Sera is obsessed with a true-crime podcast. When the host suddenly stops adding episodes Sera is sure something happened to her. She finds different pieces of the podcast and strings them together to find the host.

I think this book would be a great audiobook to hear the podcast elements.

As a fan of true crime podcasts and podcasts in thrillers I had to read this. I'll admit the cover is interesting too. I do plan to re-read this and listen to the audio book when it's available because I need to hear those podcast elements. Sera is searching for her favorite podcaster, Rachel, after she goes missing. She heads to Rachel's small hometown and ends up finding a way to insert herself into Rachel's family's life. She gets a job working on the ranch where Rachel lived and slowly but surely the tale unfolds and it's ominous and just plain creepy. There's weird cats and sickly looking dogs, horses turning on one another, weird poisons to kill overrun blackberry bushes, no internet, no cell phone service, and literally everyone from the parents to Jeb, the ranch hand, are strange. I found it very difficult trying to imagine where the story was taking me, where I would end up, and there were many times that Sera felt watched, but she never gave up, never tried to leave. Even more odd is how everyone from Rachel's parents to Jeb to Rachel's brother, and friends, even the cops all had theories where Rachel was or what happened to her, yet no one except Sera really seemed concerned about her disappearance. Everything stayed just on the wrong side of right and it kept me guessing and curious if Sera was on the right track, if she would solve the case, but the ending left me puzzled more than once. Since I honestly had no clue what was happening, I couldn't figure out what I expected exactly yet the ending left me just in that state of "huh..." and when things started being revealed it just got more and more weird until the last page. I can't say it's an ambiguous ending because it's pretty much spelled out, but I got whiplash with the twists and it made it feel like I just needed a tiny bit more. Like I said at the beginning I do hope to re-read this one when it releases in January 2021, hear the podcast elements, see the story a bit more polished, and see what I think the second go around.