Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - If I Disappear

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

If I Disappear by Eliza Jane Brazier

15 reviews

minimicropup's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Fanatical, sanguine, peculiar

Our MC, struggling with their life of loneliness and instability, finds solace in true crime podcasts. When their favourite host stops posting, the last bright spot in their life is gone and they fear the worst has happened.

🇺🇸 Set in Happy Camp and a nearby ranch in Northern California, USA

🐺Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags🐕
😃 The present tense narration directed exclusively at the podcast host added to the creepy elements and drew me in from the first chapter. I did not want this book to end and there were multiple times where I thought "where could we possibly go from here?"

👍😃 If you aren't big into true crime I think this would still be an interesting story, but if you are a fan or regular consumer, it's enhanced by references to common tips and actual 'infamous' true crime cases paired with fictionalized ones that seemed so plausible I found myself looking them up. Each chapter starts with a blurb from a case that hints at the theme and event to come.

🥺 The character development (respectfully) plays in the area between highly sensitive neurodivergence and completely unhinged delusional danger. At first I was there for all the cringe Sera brings to the story but then I started to care for her. It isn't contrived or convenient, but she was still annoying so you may struggle with this if you don't like think-yelling things like "what is WRONG with you?!" and "No, no do NOT go over there and say those things!"

🤪 Creepy small town isolation with an odd family done right. Each character is 'off' in their own way and we go back and forth about trusting them and their explanations for what is going on. The isolation comes from not knowing where the safe spaces are anymore and being too invested to leave...but still being able to.

😳 I wish there was a ranch map at the start. The ranch has all these well drawn out regions where we spend a lot of time and I kept misplacing them in relation to others.

😍 The suspense comes from the eerie undercurrent, figuring out who to trust, getting invested along with the MC in what is going on and if anyone is even in danger and if so, who? There are times where nothing much happens but I love that in stories as long as it's used to build more suspense and mystery and is paired with good character, plot, or world development.

🤷‍♀️ This is the kind of story where you can predict what happened because we are consistently getting clues (and lets face it, our MC is rather dense), but possibilities are varied so even if you guess the 'big bad', there is still the mystery of why and how. The ending felt too chaotic and rushed at one point, but it evened out.

📺 I want this to be a mini-series. It reminded by of Bloodline on Netflix (vibes, not story).

Mood Reading Match Up:

Plot and themes around true crime (podcasts and listeners) and domesticity
Missing person that reads like a true crime case
Slightly ‘off’ broken narrator + creepy everybody
Eerie isolated small town and secretive ranch world building
Stuck together/forced proximity romance

Content Heads-Up: Obsession. Mental Illness (anxiety, panic, sleep disorders). Gaslighting. Loneliness. Vomit. Animal death and cruelty. Sexual content (consenting). Alcohol use (self medicating, addiction). Childfree by choice rep. Car accident.
For animal death and cruelty:

Spoiler

some of it is just what come from being surrounded by nature and living on a ranch with wild animals around, some of it is cat and horse murder, and the rest is cruelty where livestock are harmed because of human inaction to prevent it

Format: Paperback

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directorpurry's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

outsmartyourshelf's review

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Sera Fleece loves true crime podcasts, especially one by a host named Rachel Bard. Rachel's podcasts are about women & girls who go missing, & when Rachel suddenly goes silent, Sera thinks she has disappeared too. Sera uproots her life & heads off to where Rachel lived/lives but when she reaches the nearest town, Happy Camp, the locals are unfriendly & try to warn her off going to the ranch. Rachel's parents, mother Addy & father Emmett, are strangely unconcerned about Rachel's whereabouts. They hire Sera to look after the horses & start getting the camp quarters into shape for summer visitors. In her free time & the evening, Sera tries to find out what happened to Rachel & why everyone is so tight-lipped about the women who have disappeared over the years. Can Sera find out what happened to Rachel before Sera disappears too?

Oh dear. This could have been great - fan of crime podcast investigates the disappearance of the host. Instead we mostly get Sera mooching around the ranch & mooning after Jed (the stock Texas cowboy stereotype). In fact Sera is the main problem with this book, she is just really annoying. Her idea of investigation is just blurting questions out without actually thinking things through, & her insistence that she knows Rachel better than anyone else just because she listened to her true crime podcast is just weird & stalkerish. Also her knowledge that she really shouldn't trust anyone but she decides to trust Jed just because she's attracted to him. I kept reading, hoping it was going to suddenly pick up, but no - even the ending is unsatisfactory. Very disappointing.

Content Warnings

odrib's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Content Warnings

juliarenae's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The plot twist at the end was something I was not expecting. This book was a bit challenging and throughout the entire book, I was trying to figure out who the killer was. It was full of many great plot twists.

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greeneskyes's review against another edition

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Narration style not for me. Main character felt annoying, I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the whole book in her head.

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sweet_caroline's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Overall, not the worst book I’ve ever read but I definitely wouldn’t recommend. It’s told from a first-person POV which I find pretty tough to get used to, but that’s just my preference. It’s also an incredibly slow build up with most of the action happening in the last 100 pages. The main character is also very hard to relate to and I just overall didn’t connect well with the characters or the book itself.

Content Warnings