A review by outsmartyourshelf
The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.5

When British actor, twenty-eight-year-old Mia Eliot, is heartlessly dumped for a younger woman by her boyfriend of six years, she decides to take up an invitation to go to LA for pilot season. When she arrives she is stunned to be housed in a spacious apartment & given a brand new car for free - all she needs to do is promise to Instagram them.  Mia's agent has booked her a photo shoot & several auditions, but at one of them Mia meets Emily, an actor from New York, up for the same part. Despite this the women get chatting & when Emily is called into her audition, Mia offers to feed the meter so Emily's car isn't towed away. After doing so, Mia returns to the reception room but the person coming out of the audition room isn't Emily - in fact she seems to have disappeared altogether. When Emily won't return her calls, & the police don't want to know, Mia starts a desperate search of her own to find out what really happened to Emily, but when it looks like someone is gaining access to her emails & even entering her apartment in the middle of the night, it seems Mia may have put herself in terrible danger.

For 80-90% of this book I was absolutely hooked, the MC was fairly easy to like & the pace was blistering with some excellent twists & turns. I literally couldn't put it down & found myself a third of the way through in the first hour. I think the ending felt rather rushed though & it didn't quite do justice to the rest of the book in my opinion, but I enjoyed the rest of it so much that it deserves 4.5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Simon & Schuster, for the opportunity to read an ARC. I am voluntarily giving an honest review.
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