REVIEW: A SIMPLE FAVOR, BY DARCEY BELL

She’s your best friend.

She knows all your secrets.

That’s why she’s so dangerous.

A single mother’s life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.

But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her dis-appearance is over.

Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.

 

 

 

 

It starts out as a simple friendship between two mommies whose children are best friends. At some point, the mommy blogger Stephanie agrees to A Simple Favor for her friend Emily, taking care of her son while she goes away for one night.

When it turns into a disappearance, Stephanie and Emily’s husband Sean begin helping each other with childcare…and then become close friends. It all morphs into a live-in relationship between them.

Meanwhile, in alternating narratives, we learn more about both Emily and Stephanie, and later we get a closer look at Sean.

Just when we think we have figured it all out, more darkness is revealed. By the end, I didn’t like any of the characters and concluded that they were all nefarious and not to be trusted. And definitely nothing about any of them is simple. 4.5

 

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REVIEW: THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED, BY LISA JEWELL

On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend.

One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite area for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.”

Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?

 

From the very first page of The Night She Disappeared, I was caught up in the mysterious events, narrated from the past and the present, offering bits and pieces of information with each step forward and backward. I especially liked learning how Kim and Sophie teamed up to find clues from social media sites.

What really happened on that summer evening when Talullah and Zach went missing? Did a group of friends who partied that night know more than they were sharing?

As I kept turning the pages, I had some thoughts about what might have happened, but in the end, I found the resolution to be unexpected.

I enjoyed figuring out the characters and their behavior, and definitely had mixed feelings about some of them. I loved the conclusion, which satisfactorily brought good things for some of them. 5 stars.

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REVIEW: WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, BY JANELLE BROWN

 

It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.

But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?

Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page.

In Watch Me Disappear, we follow the thoughts and actions of those left behind when Billie Flanagan “dies.” Did she die, though, or did she choose to disappear?

A year later, her beloved friends and family are still struggling with that question. Jonathan is writing a memoir of his life with Billie, but the more he digs into what he knew about her and their life together, he realizes that he has more questions than answers about Billie. Who was she really, and did he even know her at all? She has had a history of disappearing from her life, beginning when she was very young. Has she done the same thing again?

Her daughter Olive was close to Billie, but near the end, there were some troubled spots. Now Olive wants to reach her mother just one more time. When she starts seeing “visions,” she is convinced that Billie is communicating with her.

Our story weaves back and forth in time, with more revelations as the moments pass, and just when we think we know what really happened, a final twist seemingly comes out of nowhere. This book I couldn’t put down earned 5 stars.

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