Reviews

Jess Greene is just trying to get her sister, Tegan, to college. Abandoned by their mother 10 years ago, Jess has done everything to control her and Tegan's life. She is obsessive about not appearing online, or on social media. She keeps her friend's list to zero and her work acquaintances know almost nothing about her. That is until two podcasters show up on her doorstep to see how her mother may be connected to an infamous con man. It turns out that careful control of her life was to avoid being connected to a decade-old Serial-esque podcast that traced the man's crimes.

This meeting kicks off an epic road trip to follow the last known locations of her mom and the con. As she travels across the country, she gets closer to one of the podcasters, Adam Hawkins, who has plenty of his own fears. Is Jess ready to slowly lower the walls she's so carefully built for the first man she's felt safe with in years?

It's hard to describe The Other Side of Disappearing. It's classified as a love story, which it is, but it's just as much a mystery. Jess and Adam fall in love as they unravel the mystery of where her mom went and why she left. Clayborn paces the book expertly, with an underlying tension, but not overwhelming anxiety. You desperately want Jess and Teagan to find their mom, but maybe you don't? At least not until the sisters grapple with what it might mean for a mom to voluntarily disappear for a decade. You desperately want Jess and Adam to work, but maybe you don't? At least not until Jess addresses her own trauma.

I loved Georgie, All Along, and this book incorporates a lot of the same things that I loved about it. It hurts, for sure, but it does have a HEA. Jess is grappling with big life changes and crises, but she works through them.

* Thank you to Kensington and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review! *