“Watch Me Disappear” by Janelle Brown is an interesting spin on a mystery story. It is not about the death of wife and mother Billy Flanagan who disappeared almost one year previously while backpacking along the Pacific Crest Trail in Desolation Wilderness. It is about the consequences of that event, a family in crisis. It is about her husband Jonathan and daughter Olive who are left behind, haunted by “missing and presumed dead,” a phrase with no conclusion.
Jonathan quits his job and is writing a book, a memoir inspired by his life with Billy. As the one-year anniversary of Billy’s disappearance approaches, Jonathan prepares to have her declared legally dead. One day at school, Olivia sees her mother as if in a dream, chiding her “Why aren’t you looking?” She is consumed with doubt and guilt. “What if Mom is still alive, somewhere, and she has reached out to let me know?”
Questions surface. Jonathan’s search for answers exposes his wife’s secret and highly problematic history. Who was this woman he married? Who was this mother of his child? What is truth and what is fiction? Eventually the past comes crashing into the present like a dead tree limb, spewing splinters everywhere, and leaving a cavernous gap in the tree trunk of their lives. Secrets are revealed that none of the players anticipated. And even when the quest seems to be over, is it really? The details come out in the end, in the very last word.
Random House Publishing Group, NetGalley, and Janelle Brown gave me a copy of “Watch Me Disappear” for an impartial review. The pace was slow but steady. The personality of each character developed as the book progressed, and there were dynamic and interesting relationships between the characters. I usually don't read books of this kind, but the description was intriguing, and I really enjoyed reading it. The last sentence is one of the best ever.

Billie Flanagan is the mother of teenager Olive and the wife of Jonathan. She’s a bit on the rebellious side and despite warnings of hiking alone, she sets off for Desolation Wilderness and doesn’t return nor has her body been found. A year after her mother’s disappearance, Olive begins to have visions of her mother asking that Olive find her which convinces Olive that her mother is still alive. Jonathan is trying to have Billie officially declared dead so he can access insurance money that the family desperately needs but he’s having doubts as to what happened to Billie as he has found secrets that she has kept from him.

I had trouble getting into this one. Some of the characters’ decisions just didn’t gel with the characters’ nature as the author described them. Some of it was hard to believe, especially the ending. The parts concerning Olive mostly seemed written in a YA style. The author does do a good job of describing the characters’ grief and their struggles following Billie’s disappearance. And it certainly did keep me guessing right up to the end. While I did find some enjoyment in reading t, the book didn’t impress me enough that I want to read the author’s other books so I can’t give it more than 3 stars.

An average book that I enjoyed.

"Watch Me Disappear" is one of those stay up way too late reading "just one more chapter" until you finish! Great characters and intriguing storyline, just a great book! Thank you to Netgallery for making it available for me!

I don’t know about you, but when I read a suspense novel, I still want to care about the characters, not just what moves the plot forward. In Janelle Brown’s new novel, Watch Me Disappear, out July 11, the plot really moves forward as a result of the characters’ personalities. Part ghost story, part suspense novel, it’s the best of both worlds.

Olive Flanagan’s mom, Billie, has been missing, presumed dead, for a year. She never returned from a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness, and no body was found. A single hiking boot and a destroyed cell phone are all that’s left of Billie Flanagan. Until Olive starts to have visions of her mom, and she and her dad, Jonathan, start to wonder what really happened to Billie. As father and daughter go on a mission to track down Billie’s body, dead or alive, they discover more than they ever knew (and maybe more than they wanted to know) about Billie and themselves.

This story felt very much like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but creepier, and with none of the fun quirkiness that Maria Semple does so well. If you enjoyed that novel and you like suspense, I think you would enjoy this book. It almost feels like a literary novel disguised as a thriller. The plot moves fairly quickly, but not so quickly that you don’t get an insight into what the characters are really like. After the first few chapters, when Jonathan starts to go through Billie’s old things and begins to realize she may not have been who everyone thought she was, I was completely hooked and wanted to find out all about her and exactly what happened.

My one caveat is that I think, personally, I would have enjoyed the novel even more if it had been more about who Billie and her family are. Olive wasn’t explored as much as she could have been, and she’s such an interesting character that I wanted to know her better.

This is such a perfect summer read, for the beach, the pool, or just your couch on a hot day! If you invest the time to read Watch Me Disappear, I guarantee you will not be disappointed with the story. (Or the ending. It was definitely a jaw-dropper for me.)

A year after Billie disappeared Jonathon and his daughter Olive are still reeling from her loss and trying to find a way for them to move forward with their lives. Billie had gone hiking by herself and never returned and after more than a week of searching the authorities called off the search finding evidence that suggested Billie may have died in those woods.

Now Olive is having visions of her mother and thinks that she just might be still alive out there and waiting for her family to find her. Jonathon is trying to get a death certificate issued so they can move on with their lives but at Olive’s insistence finds himself also questioning his wife’s fate. The two begin to investigate and uncover the secrets Billie had hidden.

Watch Me Disappear is another book that I struggled with deciding how I really wanted to rate this one. After much deliberating I decided to just stay down the middle with my rating as there were some things in here that I just kept thinking about that sort of bothered me with this mystery. However, even with my doubts I still got engaged and would definitely pick up another read by this author so in no way did I find this one bad at all either.

The first thing I found odd about this mystery/thriller read was that quite honestly for me as a reader it lacked the thrilling part for the most part. Taking place a year after Billie’s disappearance perhaps left out that beat the clock discovery for me. At that point I thought to myself if she is alive then there’s like a 99% chance she’s left on purpose so perhaps you guys should just move on and leave the secrets buried…. although as a fan of mystery/thriller I was still curious as to what happened, just not as intensely.

But also, I found Olive’s “visions” to be a strange addition to this type of book. Thinking to myself while reading these parts and how that gets played out later that this type of thing really didn’t fit this book in my mind. Somehow that whole part of the read made the story progress but it just had an odd feel to it being included, although that is just my personal opinion and it may not bother others. So these things left me scratching my head a bit but thinking I’d try this author again because I saw a lot of potential to the writing.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I loved every second of this twisty, turning, could-not-put-it-down tale! There were so many gasp worthy moments that fans of the Husband's Secret would probably delight in. I would love for there to be a book two entirely from Billie's perspective.

This book was really good! It has lots of layers - the characters are complex, Billie especially - she was a completely different person before she met Jonathan and she only allows him to have a glimpse of who she was and who she is even well into their marriage. The story flowed well. There was never a dull moment. We'd be trying to figure out what happened to Billie and then we'd be hit with secrets of hers that I did not see coming. I couldn't stand not knowing if she was dead or alive. I thought I had the ending figured out but I was wrong. I loved it!

My favorite kind of story, someone disappears and we have this niggling suspicion there's more to the story. Wife and mother, Billie Flanagan disappeared almost a year before while out hiking in Desolation Wilderness. Her husband Jonathan has turned to drinking and writing his memoir to cope as he attempts to make it all legal by filing in the court of law stating Billie is dead, even though nothing but her hiking boot was ever found. Billie and Jonathan's daughter Olive, has struggled with her mother's disappearance too, but when she starts having strange visions where her mom seems to be talking to her, she begins to doubt her mom is even possibly dead. The author does an excellent job of slowly giving the reader insight into Billie's life, prior to Jonathan and during her marriage to Jonathan and during her years raising Olive. It really makes you think, "Are people what they seem to be on the surface?". Great build up to an excellent and satisfying ending.

I have just recently discovered women’s fiction. An author friend encouraged me to try the genre, explaining the concept and potential drama of stories about women struggling with life choices and crooked paths. The first book I read in this genre knocked my socks off. This book had a lot to live up to, and didn’t quite get there.

Beautifully written, with great style, the story was a little too transparent. Told from the points of view of the husband, Jonathan, and the daughter, Olive, it explores the events leading up to the disappearance and supposed death of wife and mother, Sybilla.

Sybilla, known as Billy, is a piece of work. I can say with sincerity that I didn’t like her from the beginning. Her gentle taunts to her daughter, told in memories, implying that Olive was too ordinary, annoyed me to no end. Olive was a perfectly nice, well-adjusted young woman who was made to feel less than what her mother expected. I will cut Billy some slack because of her childhood, but not much. Most of what she revealed to her family and friends were half-truths or total lies.

Olive and Jonathan, on the other hand, were sweet, trusting and loving, never doubting Billy for a moment, until after her disappearance. Jonathan was completely in love with his wife, and Olive adored her mother. Lies are never a good idea, and they came back…HARD…to bite Billy in the butt.

I’m fascinated by the way a talented author couples words and phrases together to weave a compelling group of characters. The writing in this story is superb, with characters we begin to understand. The writing should be worth five enthusiastic stars, but, being a self-proclaimed story-slut, I couldn’t do it. The story was predictable. No surprises. If an engaging story is what you’re looking for, you might want to skip this one. If you’re satisfied reading beautiful prose, then you should pick up a copy and…

Enjoy!

2shay

I found this novel to be an easy reading look into the past of a wife & mother, simply gone missing. Peeling back the layers, a determined father is "assisted" by his equally inquisitive daughter...

I'm a sucker for great character development, and Janelle Brown gives us that in spades. Billie, the perfect wife and mother goes missing on a solo hiking trip and is presumed dead. Olive, the devastated daughter and Jonathan, the bereft husband lurch forward in their lives that feel empty without the center that held them together. As the anniversary of Billie's death approaches, Olive begins to believe that her mother is still alive, perhaps kidnapped and needing help. Jonathan also thinks she may be alive, but for more nefarious reasons. As they delve into Billie's past, they realize that she wasn't quite the woman that they'd idolized. Some secrets are best left buried, but others transform their lives for the better.

I liked the unfolding of Billie's past and oh my, what a satisfying ending.

Thank you, Netgalley, for this absorbing read.

WATCH ME DISAPPEAR contains some of the components present in GONE GIRL. This time the disappeared is one Billie Flanagan, a Berkeley mom living what appears to be the perfect life, who went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Is she dead or has her “soccer mom” life been just another lie hidden among a plethora of lies and is her sudden death part of some bigger plan? Her body was never found and the only proof of her death is a shattered cellphone and one hiking boot.

Now, one year after Billie’s disappearance the husband and daughter she left behind are coping with her death in their individual ways. Her husband is writing a tender memoir about their life together bolstered by a bit of booze and daughter Olive has begun having visions intimating that her mother is still alive. She has withdrawn from her father and her friends at school dwells on the visions and what they are telling her. Slowly, father and daughter begin to learn who Billie really was and how little they really knew about this woman they loved.

Part mystery and part relationship tale, this thought provoking tale will have you staying up into the wee hours to learn the truth about Billie and the family she left behind.

This book was interesting but left me angry. I can't say why without giving it away. I kind of wish there will be a sequel so we can learn even more about what happens to the characters.

This is a wonderful story about relationships, family dynamics and the cost of deception. Jonathan is in his early 40's, he works feverishly at his job at Decode, a successful tech company. Billie, his beautiful, free spirit wife, who used to be a kind of a hippie/eco terrorist, seems to have settled into a comfortable life, staying at home and looking after her young teenage daughter Olive. The happy family is shattered one day when Billie does not return from a solo hiking trip, and is eventually presumed dead. A year later, Jonathan is struggling for money, as he realizes he hates his job, and has quit in order to write a memoir of his love story and life with Billie. Disturbing information keeps coming to light as Jonathan slowly realizes that his wife was not at all the woman he thought her to be. On top of this, Olive start to have 'visions' of her mom, and is convinced that she is not really dead. The search for the true story of Billie's life takes father and daughter on a journey with an unexpected ending. I really loved the writing style, and the way the story moved between each character's point of view and timeline. It does keep the reader interested until the last page! Thanks to Netgalley for a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review

The three main characters in this terrific puzzle are Jonathan, his wife Billie, and their teenage daughter Billie. In the Prologue, we get a hint about Billie’s adventurous nature as she comments to Jonathan as they are watching Olive at the beach: “She’s going to need to grow a thicker skin or she’s going to spend her whole life being too afraid to try anything.”

In the novel, Billie has gone off hiking solo and has disappeared. As months go by, Jonathan is trying to cope with the mysterious loss when Olive begins having vivid dreams that have her convinced her mom is still alive. While Jonathan doesn’t actually wish her dead, he has an interest in having her declared legally dead in order to collect insurance money. It really isn’t possible to tell much about the story without spoiling it, but it is well crafted and kept me guessing until the end (although, admittedly, I am the worst at figuring things out in terms of mystery plotting). So I’ll just try to convey why the experience of reading this was so enjoyable, with some examples of Ms. Brown’s narrative skill.

Olive is revealed to be quite a sensitive teenager. She attends a pricey prep school in the Bay Area, and as she observes some girls who are a couple of years behind her in school, she “wishes she could tell these girls that things get easier, but in her experience they don’t…you just discover that there are even bigger, more complicated problems that you have to solve.”

I love the way Ms. Brown describes teenaged girls, saying they “…are like skittish forest creatures that dance away at your approach, snarl if you dare to confront them head-on. You need to wait, patiently, for them to come to you.”

Brown also captures the upper-middle-class soccer moms whose daughters attend Claremont Prep with Olive. As Jonathan takes on the after-school pickup duties following Billie’s exit, and is suddenly an available male, the”…Claremont Moms are circling. They flutter around Jonathan, a flock of predatory birds in lululemon and boyfriend jeans.”

Not a fast-paced action thriller by any means, but an unraveling story that was a pleasure to read. I appreciate having a copy made available by Random House/Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Four enthusiastic stars.

This book has gotten so many good reviews, and has such hype, I was so excited to be given the chance to read it. But then I was immediately disappointed, and the book actually ended up in my Did Not Finish pile. I do have plans to go back and try it again, but from the first couple of chapters, I was getting a paranormal vibe, and thatch not for me. I know I should have pushed on with this one, but for now, I had to put it aside.

While hiking alone, wife (Billie, aka Sibilla) goes missing, so husband (Jonathan) and 16 yo daughter (Olive) search for her. Is it possible that she's still alive? Was she kidnapped? And what's up with Olive's strange visions of her mother?

The premise of this story was intriguing, but in my opinion, it fell flat somewhere along the way. This one is being called a thriller, but since the story progresses so slowly, I think general fiction or mystery would be a better categorization. I definitely enjoyed the author's writing style, and would try another book by her.

Sibilla came across as extremely selfish, and I have a hard time relating to that type of character.

🚨 Drowning alert of a minor character, for those that cannot read about it.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

A gorgeous novel about the weight of loss. Billie disappears while hiking and her husband Jonathan and daughter Olive are left to mourn her. They never find a body, but it's impossible for her to have survived so Jonathan and Olive need to put their lives back together without the closure of a funeral. Jonathan then finds out details about Billie's secrets that make him doubt their life together. Meanwhile, Olive starts having visions about her mother that lead her to believe that she may be alive. I am giving this novel 4 stars because it's impeccably written. It has several twists and the characters are solid and well-built. That said, this is not the kind of book I like, as it focusses more on the characters’ thoughts and feelings than the mystery of Billie's disappearance. Readers who enjoy slow-burners will love it.

How well do we actually know the ones we love? If they had secrets that came out after their death, would they totally change the way that we looked at that person or would we just shrug and say “That was just like so and so“. Watch Me Disappear explores those questions in-depth.


Watch Me Disappear is a very well written book about finding out secrets about your loved ones and how those secrets can change how you see your loved one. While the book got off to a very slow start, it more than made up for the first slowness throughout the book. When you learned one thing about Billie and thought it was over with another secret comes to light. Then with all the issues with Olive and Jonathan were having after Billie’s death, the book was very flushed out.

Jonathan, I felt awful for. He was destroyed when Billie went missing on a solo hike. It took him months to even begin to deal with her death. He was struggling to connect with Olive, who had withdrawn after her mother disappeared, and he was struggling to make ends meet. So when his lawyer explained that to legally declare Billie dead, they needed to post an ad in the paper, he wasn’t very happy about it. It was during that time that he found her laptop. It was what he found when he started looking into the laptop that threw him for a loop and made him ask himself this question “Did he even know who Billie was?” The more he found out about her, the more he asked himself that question. He also began to question if she really did die out in the wilderness. Instead, he began to think that maybe, just maybe, she faked her death.

Olive, I also felt awful for. Not only did she miss her mother desperately, but she was starting to see visions of her. The first vision that she saw Billie in was at school and caused Olive to walk into the wall. Olive, desperate to find her mother, starts to search alternative methods to explain the visions that she was having. Olive was so sweet and I wanted to cry when she was searching and she was also finding out that her mother was someone who she didn’t know. I wanted to reach through the book and give her a hug.

I was not expecting the ending. Sure, I was expecting the 1 year later scene, with Olive and Jonathan happy and successful. But what I wasn’t expecting and it kinda blew my mind. You need to read the book to find out what I am talking about.

How many stars will I give Watch Me Disappear: 4

Why: A solid mystery that had a great plot and good characters. Even the flawed ones you couldn’t help but like.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Language and sex

**I received a free copy of this book and volunteered to review it**