This week, we have mystery on the reading shelf.

In Watch Me Disappear, author Janelle Brown introduces us to teenaged Olive Flanagan, coming up on the 1-year anniversary of her mother’s death. Mother Billie went hiking (by herself) and never returned. All they found was her crushed cell phone and one hiking boot. Father Jonathan is still getting used keeping the house stocked with milk and toilet paper. How did Billie manage to always have this stuff?

Suddenly Olive sees visions of an ethereal Billie who urges her to “try harder.” So, maybe she isn’t dead???

Pre-Jonathan, Billie escaped from a strict religious upbringing. She plunged into a life of protesting causes. When she met Jonathan, she traded in endangered trees for yoga and motherhood. Would you be surprised if she was the kind of mom who, when the school called about misbehavior, brought her daughter home and threw a magical hooky party? Yeah, me neither. “Olive came up with her own method for doing subtraction . . . They’re trying to zap every bit of creativity right out of her.”

When was this book written?

Ah, 2017.

Well. I thought we knew better by now. I mean, twenty years ago, we suspected that participation ribbons and overprotection might not end well. By now, I think we know that we messed up.

But I digress.

Billie was the kind of woman who encouraged Jonathan to quit his job and follow his dreams, another scheme that might not end well, but he can still afford their Berkeley bungalow thanks to his advance on the memoir he is writing about his late wife.

Lucky thing, because the life insurance money hasn’t come through yet. No body, no check. According to the law, if they wait a year, and make all reasonable efforts, the court will issue the death certificate. Then Jonathan and Olive can get on with life.

Except that Olive thinks her mother is still alive.

These people need answers. As Jonathan and Olive follow all the leads, Jonathan looks over his manuscript and wonders if he got any of it right. Was Billie unbelievably floaty and perfect? Or incredibly deceptive and selfish?

The twists and turns kept me guessing.

I pretty much forgave the bumps in the story. These included the author’s opinions on religion. Back in the day, Billie’s nutjob religious parents (they couldn’t possibly be people of sense, could they?) demanded that she dress in long skirts. They were fixin’ to send her to a religious school. And Brown identifies this religion as Episcopal.

Then there was the sexual identity public service message. Perhaps our big publishing houses have diversity quotas these days? Plotwise, this bit was like hopping into your Uber, headed for a concert and the driver stops in at a hobby shop along the way.

Photo credit: veggiefrog on VisualHunt / CC BY