About this item
The disappearance of a beautiful, charismatic mother leaves her family to piece together her secrets in this propulsive novel for fans of Big Little Lies - from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. "Tantalizing and twisty . . . a spider's web of a novel . . . You won't be able to put it down." - Megan Abbott Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are. 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. Praise for Watch Me Disappear"Clever and compelling, this ricocheting tale reveals that, even in the closest families, how little we know of the ones we love, and how our own secrets are often the hardest to bear, can cost us dearly in the end." - Lisa Gardner, author of Right Behind You "A riveting, seductive read about the secret, protected places within even the most intimate relationships . . . Janelle Brown has written a novel that provokes thought as her story twists and turns. I loved it." - Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants "Watch Me Disappear is at once a riveting page-turner and a thoughtful meditation on what it means to know other people - and ourselves." - Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California "I devoured Watch Me Disappear in one sitting. In this poignant and captivating story of a missing woman and the family she left behind, Brown deftly peels away the layers of a loving marriage to reveal a haunting mystery and a devastating truth: that no matter how much you love someone, you can never truly know them." - Laura McHugh, author of The Weight of Blood"The real magic of Watch Me Disappear is Brown's gift for evoking familial love in all its mad permutations - and the more intensely for the high stakes of what has been taken, and what is yet to be found. This is a story you simply don't want to end - but then, lord, what an ending!" - Tim Johnston, author of Descent
About the Author
Welcome to my home on . A little about me: I'm the New York Times bestselling author of the novels PRETTY THINGS, WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING, THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE and the upcoming I'LL BE YOU. My books have been New York Times bestsellers and published in a dozen countries around the world. My books tend to be page-turners with dysfunctional family relationships at their hearts; while my first two books were more satirical domestic dramas, my latest three are literary suspense. I'm also very much a California writer, and my books are set across the state. I'm always happy to answer questions here, but you can also find me on Instagram and Twitter -- and if you visit you can also sign up for my newsletter. I've known I wanted to be a novelist ever since I was in first grade, when my teacher looked at the whimsical little books I liked to make (and the pile of books I checked out of the school library every week) and said that I could be an author when I grew up. I took her suggestion to heart. It took me several decades to get to novel-writing, though. I first started off as an essayist and journalist, writing for Wired and Salon in San Francisco, during the dotcom boom years. In the 1990's, I was also the editor and co-founder of Maxi, an irreverent (and now, long-gone) women's pop culture magazine. My writing has also appeared in Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. I've spent the fifteen years working on my novels, writing the occasional essay, and living in Los Angeles with my husband and two children.
