Happy Book Birthday to Eliza Jane Brazier whose adult debut, If I Disappear, hits shelves today!
Sera is unemployed, single, and without any connections. But she is an avid fan of true crime podcasts. Which is why, when she becomes convinced that her favorite podcaster—Rachel Bard of Murder, She Spoke—has gone missing, Sera decides she's going to be the one to solve the mystery.
Rachel's family owns and runs the Fountain Creek Ranch, just outside of Happy Camp, California. It's supposed to be a popular summer destination for families, but Sera arrives during the off season. So she claims to have heard there was work and is soon employed as a ranch hand, helping with the horses. This kind of in is perfect for her to nose around and uncover clues. Or so she thinks.
Rachel's parents are odd. Her mother insists that Sera stay away from nearby Happy Camp, claiming the locals hate them. And what little interaction Sera has with people outside of the ranch seems to support that opinion. In fact, no one outside of Fountain Creek is concerned about Rachel at all.
Sera knows that Rachel isn't the first woman to go missing from Happy Camp. Rachel told her all about them through her podcast. And Sera is certain that Rachel must have had her own suspicions. And if she did, Sera knows she would have left clues for someone like Sera to find.
Eliza Jane Brazier's debut is a twisty addition to the massively popular trend of setting thrillers and mysteries around the world of true crime podcasts.
This is something of a tough review to write in part because If I Disappear is the kind of book that I think works best if you're able to go into it kind of unprepared for what's coming. I'll try to be as unspoilery as I can be, but if you're a reader who appreciates being truly surprised, I'd suggest skipping the rest of the below until you have a chance to read the book yourself! (And then you can come back and tell me what you think about it!)
Sera is something of a lost soul. She's unmoored. She has no real goals and no real friends. In fact, she spends her days obsessively listening to true crime podcasts and that's about it.
And obsessed is a good word to describe Sera.
No one has declared Rachel Bard missing. But Sera is so deep in Rachel's world that she honestly believes she's the only one who knows the podcast and its host well enough to realize that something suspicious has occurred. Until she arrives at Fountain Creek Ranch and speaks to Rachel's own mother, Sera is pretty much alone in her concern about Rachel. But even Rachel's mother won't talk to the police.
It's hard to know, as a reader, just how much you can trust Sera's narrative. She's an odd bird. But it quickly becomes apparent that pretty much everyone in the story is odd to some degree. In fact, there comes a point in reading the book where Sera seems almost normal compared to all of the other characters!
I actually found that I liked Sera quite a bit. She's a little blank, a little bland, a character who doesn't really bring much to the story herself. But she never felt flat or undeveloped. Instead, she felt like a person who is still searching for who she wants to be and what she wants from life. As such, it's easy to believe that she'd hop in the car one day, leaving everything behind, with no real plan except to solve the mystery of where her favorite podcaster has disappeared to.
The pacing of the book was excellent! Chapters begin with lines from different episodes of the podcast and some turn out to be connected to Sera's own investigation. If I have one complaint, though, it would be that some of those podcast bits seemed just as interesting as the book itself, leaving me wanting more than just a line or two!
It's probably no surprise to say that there's a pretty big twist at the end of this one. It's a twist that I honestly can't say I didn't see coming. Brazier peppered the book with pretty obvious clues leading to the twist, which I'm certain was intentional. They're the kind of clues that I think in retrospect any reader (and even Sera in a few cases) recognizes as leading up to the twist. Certainly they're the kinds of things that that I think would stand out more on a second read through.
That said, I think it's the kind of twist that leaves a little up to the reader to decide. And it seems some people really liked it and others did not. Personally, I thought it worked! It was a satisfying, if someone messy, end to a book that I found thoroughly engaging!
Order a copy from your favorite indie via Bookshop!
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