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3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
Well, this is an interesting book. I’m unsure of all my feelings at the moment.
This mystery was all over the place. I finished it out of curiosity but never connected with the main character, and the mystery itself felt very vague, with twists that didn't work. Disappointing.
I'm not a fan of second person, either, and I just read a similar mystery in second person, released earlier this year -- I really hope this isn't a trend.
I'm not a fan of second person, either, and I just read a similar mystery in second person, released earlier this year -- I really hope this isn't a trend.
bad! sorry! this got so close to making a point so many times but didn’t. also made a lot of leaps and loved to just gloss over bits. i’m not mad i read it but wouldn’t recommend it
It was a 3.5 for most of it but I really disliked the ending which brought it down.
WOW. This book had me hooked from the very first paragraph — it’s so unique and creative to have this written in a second-person style and I genuinely couldn’t put this down. It was suspenseful, full of twists, and just a wonderful thriller. Haven’t read anything else like it!
Sera is a superfan of the podcast, Murder She Spoke. When the host of the podcast, Rachel, stops recording and updating her social media, Sera is determined to make sure that Rachel does not become one of the missing women she has devoted so much of her podcast work to.
Sera goes to Rachel’s childhood home in Happy Camp, California, and begins to investigate everyone in Rachel’s life. For Sera, the mystery only grows even more complicated, as she must determine if Rachel is in danger and by extension, she is.
It took two tries to read this, as I started this book earlier in the pandemic and I think the story of a woman isolated in one place was not a book I wanted to read. I think the key to my embracing and finishing this book was that I had to stop thinking of it like a murder podcast hybrid thriller, like Sera was just going to run into a place of gasps and dark corners. It is a much more measured pace then that.
The characters and the place are so well-described that you are continuously confronted with discomfort for the situation just as you are reminded of the natural beauty of the place.
If I Disappear is also about obsession/devotion, and how spending an hour a week listening to someone, it is easy for the line between listener and friend in your head to get blurred. In recent years, a lot of true crime podcasts with female hosts have sprung up, and as a listener it can feel conversational but unlike Sera, listeners remember that it is only a segment of that hosts’ life. They are still strangers, and Sera is continuously reminded of this as she gets deeper into Rachel’s life.
Naturally, there is a twisty dark ending, but I think I respect the book more for giving me the ending I did not expect, even if I was not happy with it. Overall, I really enjoyed this book!
Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!
Sera goes to Rachel’s childhood home in Happy Camp, California, and begins to investigate everyone in Rachel’s life. For Sera, the mystery only grows even more complicated, as she must determine if Rachel is in danger and by extension, she is.
It took two tries to read this, as I started this book earlier in the pandemic and I think the story of a woman isolated in one place was not a book I wanted to read. I think the key to my embracing and finishing this book was that I had to stop thinking of it like a murder podcast hybrid thriller, like Sera was just going to run into a place of gasps and dark corners. It is a much more measured pace then that.
The characters and the place are so well-described that you are continuously confronted with discomfort for the situation just as you are reminded of the natural beauty of the place.
If I Disappear is also about obsession/devotion, and how spending an hour a week listening to someone, it is easy for the line between listener and friend in your head to get blurred. In recent years, a lot of true crime podcasts with female hosts have sprung up, and as a listener it can feel conversational but unlike Sera, listeners remember that it is only a segment of that hosts’ life. They are still strangers, and Sera is continuously reminded of this as she gets deeper into Rachel’s life.
Naturally, there is a twisty dark ending, but I think I respect the book more for giving me the ending I did not expect, even if I was not happy with it. Overall, I really enjoyed this book!
Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars - Difficult to rate / review. I spent most of the book eyebrows raised, side-eyeing Sera and her obsession with Rachel. Neither her "investigation" nor the podcast that inspired it seemed particularly well done. However, the insane ending with Rachel turning out to be a serial killer who created a podcast based on the women she 'disappeared' elevated my enjoyment, even though her motives felt underdeveloped and the conclusion abrupt.
Like a few other reviewers I've seen on this page, I was drawn in by the premise of this novel. True crime has a massive female fanbase, and the genre can allow some to feel "seen" when stories of supposedly invisible women come to light. Certain fans can take things too far and lose sight of the "characters" being actual people, and our narrator Sera seems perilously close to that point. She is concerned for a victim, but in this case, she believes the host of her favorite podcast is a victim of a kidnapping or worse. She drops everything in her life to go to Rachel's family's ranch to investigate, and she miraculously winds up getting a job on the ranch.
I think we are supposed to empathize with Sera, but she falls victim to a problem I've found in a lot of recent fiction: the flawed woman gone too far. I'm all for realistic characters rather than holding women to impossible standards, but all we learn about Sera is failure. She dropped out of college, she's divorced, she's late on rent, she bounces between minimum wage jobs without being able to stick to any of them, and she has no friends whatsoever. I understand that she has to be this way in order to seem totally isolated at the ranch, and people like her do exist, but I wanted signs of hope rather than just obsessing over Rachel. I found her cartoonishly two-dimensional, especially with how the second person narration has her directing the entire novel at Rachel.
The ending I predicted, but it just didn't really hold together for me. I think Eliza Jane Brazier is creative and will probably read future work, but this didn't live up to my expectations.
I think we are supposed to empathize with Sera, but she falls victim to a problem I've found in a lot of recent fiction: the flawed woman gone too far. I'm all for realistic characters rather than holding women to impossible standards, but all we learn about Sera is failure. She dropped out of college, she's divorced, she's late on rent, she bounces between minimum wage jobs without being able to stick to any of them, and she has no friends whatsoever. I understand that she has to be this way in order to seem totally isolated at the ranch, and people like her do exist, but I wanted signs of hope rather than just obsessing over Rachel. I found her cartoonishly two-dimensional, especially with how the second person narration has her directing the entire novel at Rachel.
The ending I predicted, but it just didn't really hold together for me. I think Eliza Jane Brazier is creative and will probably read future work, but this didn't live up to my expectations.